Originally Posted by squeakywheel
I have a grand total of 1 round trip fixed gear commute to my credit. So, I'm hardly qualified to comment, but anyway... The biggest nuisance was the horible roads around here. I always lift off the seat and coast over the huge cracks and rough sections. My bent legs absorb the impact. With the fixed gear, I took a beating since I mostly didn't stand up on the rough spots. Even when I tried, it was left to chance where I would be in the pedal stroke and sometimes the impact caught me in awkward positions.
The other issue for me was the downhill sections. I don't mind pedalling downhill, but gravity wanted me to go faster than I wanted to pedal.
It was harder to look over my left shoulder without coasting. I could probably do better with practice, but as of right now, I'm not flexible enough to do it without turning my hips a bit. Hard to pedal with your hips turned to the left.
At one intersection, I stopped with the pedals at an awkward position from which to restart.
Basically, I didn't enjoy that day much. My knee hurt for two days when I was done too. For some strange reason, I'm still fascinated with the fixed gear idea. Next time, I'm going to try it on a flat bike trail.
For some strange reason your experience doesn't make the fixed gear experience sound fascinating to me. You fixed experience is exactly what I would expect based on aa bicycle that does not allow the cyclist to coast at appropriate times. I'm only surprised that you needed to actually do it to figure out the obvious.