Originally Posted by
LarrySellerz
How do you feel about a fixie joining in a group road ride? Would you want them to have two brakes or would a front brake be sufficient? Think they are worse than a TT bike even if the rider stays off the aerobars? I saw a fixie on a group ride once, he just stayed in the back, it was a "slow" day im not sure if he could have kept up on the fast days. Im getting a track bike soon and was planning on running a front brake to start out, and don't plan on doing hooligan stuff like whipskids. Are drop bars nececary, I know bullhorns can get caught up in the handlebars of dropbars, but flat should be fine right
I've ridden fixed on lots of local and club rides, as well as several event rides through the years. I would steer clear of the hammerfest folks, but I do that anyway, whether on the cog or on variable gears. If it's people you know it should be fine. I've gotten the side-eye from riders who didn't know me, but my bikes tend to put me in that camp anyway. On big group rides - I did several t-shirt and cookie rides as well as the old MS-150 ride fixed - let the speedy folk go on by and settle in, you should be fine, and the point is to find people of comparable ability to ride with, anyway.
Because (with the exception of a Bianchi Pista I had 20-odd year ago) my fixed-gears have all been either conversions on older road frames or purpose-built custom road fixed-gears, I've always run brakes fore and aft while still using the fixed-cog-and-lockring's capabilities to modulate speed. I've also always used dropped bars, preferably something like a classic Maes bend, something that is NOT "ergo" but with the classical curves to provide all the little adjustments within each position to better use more muscle groups in different ways. The materials I read in the early 70s shaped my thinking that it's better to have the bar tops no more than two inches below the top of the saddle, and I can switch between standing climbing with my hands on the brake lever hoods to classical British climbing methods espoused in the 40s and 50s of sitting back in the saddle and holding the tops of the bars near the stem and slowly " turning 'em 'round" - or even easing into the drops and muscling things through. I mean, you could use flats, but you cheat yourself out of a lot of different positions when you do so.