Re: spinning out at 10 mph.



I gear most of my bikes (unless they are set up for touring) so I can spin out at 30 mph and still climb all but the nastiest of hills here and that make descending a lot more fun as I can still reach 40 mph.

There are many folks I know with nice road bikes that can't hang on to my back wheel and a lot of that comes from riding tens of thousands of miles on a fixed gear... do that and the times you find that you are in the wrong gear will become less and less as your power range will be most increased.

Racers of old started by being put on a fixed gear and after 1000 miles would then be put on a geared bike as after this amount of time they would have increased their fitness and suppleness by many degrees.

Riding fixed has made me a much stronger rider and I was already pretty strong.

The big nasty here is 12-18% for most of it's distance and then has a 22% grade at the top and I have yet to walk that on my fg's... it's nearly 1000 feet of "lets see how tough you really are".

I have come very close to nailing a sub hour 40 on my 1955 Lenton and if I had not stopped to take a few pictures I would have.

As a lover of classic bikes I really love fixed gears as they are a significant piece of cycling history and were once considered to be a most viable form of transportation... even when geared bikes were available.

I am always happy to see people riding, no matter what kind of bike that is.

Any trashed frame makes me a sad camper.