Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - Sorry, gotta brag and you blokes are about the only ones who'll understand

Riding to work yesterday, I belted down one of the hills on the ride and thought to myself, 'sheesh that feels quick'. A check of the bike computer afterwards (yeah, I'm a numbers nerd), showed a top speed of 56.5 km/hr, which isn't extreme on a geared bike, but I'm riding fixed. I fired up my gearing calculator - I was pulling a cadence of 168 :eek:

No flamin' wonder it felt quick ... and yes, it felt good to get to the bottom :o

Richard

WOW...........................

168 rpm.......................

My knees would've fallen off.

My feet would have slipped off of my un-rentented pedals at 168 rpm. Assplosion!

i've spun that cadence before...it's about my max i think.

Dude, nice. I never know how fast I'm going.

Cheers

lol not to discount your quickness at all, but this reminds me of something I overheard recently. it was something along the lines of "I love how whenever your fast due to a tailwind, you're all like 'yeah, I'm the man,' but whenever you're the least bit slow due to a headwind, you're like 'jeez, this headwind sucks.'"

but still, going fast is enjoyable no matter how you get there, and that's a pretty impressive cadence, to boot.

you were going down a hill..

you were going down a hill..


Hey debbie downer, get out.



But seriously, thats fast as hell. What kinda computer do you have? Im thinking about looking for a cheap one here soon.

50:12 gearing?

50:12 ? At that cadence, I'd be doing 90 km/hr :eek:

Nah, good old 48:18

Polar CS200 bike computer that's getting a bit old now but isn't giving me any reasons to disbelieve it.

It's a genuine speed and I seem to have done the calcs right (Rabbit agrees). Dunno if I'll ever see that again though, which is another reason to make the most of it. I topped 80km/hr on my geared bike once and the experience was such that I haven't come close since :innocent: I do live in a hilly area and up to now, I've saved the fixed gear for the flats. However, I've found ways around the nastiest of the climbs and as I strengthen up, want to convert as much to fixed gear riding as I can - been riding fixed for 5 years so I'm a slow developer. I've always been a natural spinner which lead to a memorable sprint in my brief track career (three races, came third ie last, second and first :D) and I've always used gears to spin up and down hills. Now I seemed to have passed some threshold and am building climbing strength, as in out of the saddle climbing, something I haven't had to do much off thanks to stupidly low gearing on my geared bikes. Maybe us old bugga's just take a lot longer to build genuine strength.

In any case, it's fun ... and it's when it's stopped being fun that I've stopped riding in the past. In my case, a nerdish fascination with numbers is all part of the fun, though I do enjoy the rides when I forget to take the bike computer.

So poke holes all you like. Yes it was down hill (I'm nothing like strong enough to do it otherwise). No, there wasn't a tailwind that day, which was a vast improvement over the day before when I had a 20 knot head wind. The smile was on MY dial, and that's the one that matters :D

Richard

No going to poke holes, I'm just going to tip my cap.

To get to 168 rpm is one thing but keeping it there is another.

Good job! :thumb:

I went down a 15% hill on 46:19. I've spun 200 rpm, even on my road bike, but I never had to keep it up for a few miles. My rim was on fire from feathering the brake and ankles felt like jello. OP, was it fun?

it was fun as ****


you were going down a hill..

So. if you can keep up with then pedals you're good. Not everyone has can over come wind resistance on flat road to hit that cadence. Would you say the same to someone who can spin 200 on rollers?

So. if you can keep up with then pedals you're good. Not everyone has can over come wind resistance on flat road to hit that cadence. Would you say the same to someone who can spin 200 on rollers?

I haven't used rollers, so i can't speak from personal experience, but i feel i would be more impressed by someone who on rollers could maintain 200rpm for any period of time.

Quick like bunny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVbwngNoHm0

Keirin training.

Short bursts of EXTREMELY high cadence.

Wow that's fast! :thumb:
Did you check to see if your knees were dislocated afterwards? :lol:

holy crap. never been anywhere close to that fast, but when I am going fast, I think of this video and I slow down, lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLRDRzMWIsg

thats pretty good. fast is always nice.

the fastest ive gone was 30mph on a flat strip on campus (uiuc)
we dont have hills over here.



Riding to work yesterday, I belted down one of the hills on the ride and thought to myself, 'sheesh that feels quick'. A check of the bike computer afterwards (yeah, I'm a numbers nerd), showed a top speed of 56.5 km/hr, which isn't extreme on a geared bike, but I'm riding fixed. I fired up my gearing calculator - I was pulling a cadence of 168 :eek:

No flamin' wonder it felt quick ... and yes, it felt good to get to the bottom :o

Richard

WOW!!! 168rpms on the road!!! That's crazy leg speed!!! Congrats!!!

I've only been riding fixed since this past April. From an almost dead stop (creeping up on a red-light, then green) I rolled out about 30ft then spun it up to an indicated 130rpms which gave me an indicated 30mph on the CATEYE and held it there for about 15 seconds on a flat road with a sidewind from my left before my knees/quads yelled UNCLE!!!. I want to eventually hold it for at least 30secs one day, but man those 15secs were pretty damn hard! My modded Soho-S is running 44t/15t on 700x28 tires. What else can I do to make myself faster and stronger....and keep my knees healthy?

Cool thread...glad you shared your down hill triumph. However....you might want to check your seat height as your cadence indicates that you probably ass pounded your seat down a couple of inches.:eek:

Good stuff! Everyone loves going fast. That downhiller video was painful though, yeesh.

Cool thread...glad you shared your down hill triumph. However....you might want to check your seat height as your cadence indicates that you probably ass pounded your seat down a couple of inches.:eek:

Yes! love this!