You just answered a 6 year old thread. I've been here a while and I don't recall seeing Dr1Gonzo at all. Not a big deal. I'll confess to being guilty of the same from time to time but some posters here have big issues with old threads being dragged up and will almost certainly come onto this thread to tell you of your sin.

And minor correction - horsepower isn't what you are talking about. Horsepower is applied force times speed. The higher gear reduces the applied force. (No, it certainly doesn't feel that way! but that high gear means the enormous force we apply at the pedal is reduced big time at the cog/freewheel/cassette.) Horsepower is not directly dictated by the gearing other that the fact that at too high or low a gear we cannot push the pedals or spin out and therefore fail to produce one part of that force times speed. (And that force is the average force over the entire pedal stroke, not the crank-busting effort we can do when the crank is at 3:00.)

Of course, on a singe speed or fix gear, the game is to best match the gear with the available range of pedal speed and strength we have (and not either do damage to ourselves straining knees, etc. uphill or over-spinning downhill - brakes can be very useful in that second scenario). One of the gifts of riding fix gear is that it opens up our usable range of RPMs a lot.

So, yes, I am continuing the presence of a long dead thread but as many here know, fix gear is my true love. And riding fix gear has changed very little in the past 140 years. Flip-flop hubs were raced more than a century ago (and are seen at the velodrome to this day - no the big races are all won on single sided hubs but at the Thursday evening races, a guy might have a 14 on one side and a 15 on the other for the next different type of race). (My avatar photo is a custom fix gear that I have used to ride 5 week long - and mountainous) Cycle Oregons. Yes, I cheat. Flip-flop hub, fixed on both sides, the chainwhip you can see on the top tube and all the 1/8" cogs between 12 and 24 teeth. Stops to flip the wheel or unscrew cogs. All stuff they did or could have done 100 years ago. And I plead guilty to being 61 years old when that photo was taken. That day I rode 42-17 with a 23 on the other side and the little 12 to make the descents a blast. Photo taken in the hills south of Mt Hood riding toward the Sisters. We'd already ridden over a pass and lunched at a dam. Pass to lunch was fun!)