Originally Posted by
TMonk
I agree with you guys for that one. If your climb takes 20 or more minutes, get a dedicated climbing bike (low gear) or a multi speed geared bike. The importance of cadence optimization is proportional to the duration of your climbs for a variety of reasons.
Still, that doesn't stop nutzos like ex-user @
Vireo from doing pychotic things like riding the
Furnace Creek 508 fixed. Granted, he did comment after the fact about how awful it was and how he would never do it again, and he is a seasoned ultra-distance rider.
For climbs that take 20 minutes, stopping and flipping a wheel around isn't a big deal. I rode the 2012 Cycle Oregon (Crater Lake) with its 4 consecutive days of 5000" climbing/day (I took a wrong turn and turned the first into 9800
fixed. Now I did this on a bike you cannot buy. I had a custom built to handle any 1/8" cog made without messing with the chain in a road dropout. Strapped a cog wrench to the top tube. For the big days I rode 42 X 17/23 carrying a 12.
Still, this is a lot harder than doing the same ride with gears. And you pay for the stops to change gears. (Then again, the early riders of races like the Tour de France did the same thing.) I am a guy who fell in love with riding fixed his first ride 40 years ago. I now have a bike that allows me to ride fixed almost anywhere without doing too much damage to this no longer young body.
Another idea I toyed with when I was setting this bike up was going double chainring and shoving the hub 1/2 the spacing to the right. Then the big chainring would match up with the every day cog and the smaller inside chainring would match up with the hill climbing cog. Maybe some day.
Ben