What's your opinion? Honest question.

I think we can all agree that at the extreme ends, the athletes (track sprinter, grand tour rider) are polar opposites in regards to training, body type and muscle fiber composition. Most of us fall (as we should) somewhere in-between.

Yeah, not so sure I agree with this. I dig your sentiment, but like a lot of users in this forum I've done a lot of fixed gear riding, road and track. While there are things about it that make it inherently and objectively difficult, it's pretty easy at this point and doesn't require so much focus. From a routine ride perspective, mountain biking requires way more focus because the risk of crashing is so much higher if you're not watching your front wheel.

Probably. I think there's good adaptation from both workouts and good reason to do both. I prefer the latter b/c it's more fun to me and I'm better at it.

I only do a handful of road races per year; my primary focus is crit and track racing I make sure to ride for 5+ hrs every few weeks or so at least. There really is no substitute - it just makes your "bag of efforts" so much deeper. You need to go "ball out" to make things sharp and effective, but without those endurance rides you won't be able to go into the red like that nearly as many times.

yep, that good ol' matchbook analogy holds true IME

Back on topic: As much as I like to downplay it, I think riding a FG for many miles does induce a little more fatigue than a freehub/freewheel bike, although that disparity gets minimized the fitter you get.

Fix gear is significantly more effort and more physically draining though not much more of a workout and at times less. Effort is a huge part of fix gear riding. Typically fix gear rides require between 25% and 33% more effort than a geared bike for the same ride. Now - effort cannot be measured on a machine. It is not watts, calories expended or anything else you can document. But all of us who have ridden the road long enough both fixed and geared know what I am talking about. (Lifetime I've done roughly 100,000 miles of each. I've done Cycle Oregon twice geared, four times fixed.) Fixed is a LOT harder, even when I bring all my cogs and can ride any gear I want (but have to both plan ahead and stop to change gears, much as they did 100 years ago). When I do Cycle Oregon geared I can stay up and listen to the music (which ends by 10pm). On the rides I do fixed, it is hard just to stay up late enough to catch the announcements re: the next days ride. Going into town after setting up my tent doesn't happen.

Riding fix gear is also wonderful for teaching good pedaling skills and recovery while pedaling. Going fast fixed downhill is all about teaching your muscles to relax completely when they aren't actually powering you. Downhill they aren't. So the better that part of your pedaling, the faster you can go downhill. Two years after I finished racing and most of my rides were on my fix gear, I used to do crazy rides up Oakland's Jauquim Miller, turn around at Skyline Blvd and bomb down the 1000' back to Oakland. I never saw my speed, but I was never passed on the 4 lane parkway with median that was usually driven at 50. All on a 42-17. So fast on small gears is quite possible if you train hard enough to relax those muscles, have the hill and have an attitude of either suicidal or crazy. (My post head-injury "crazy years. Those rides kept me out of institutions and off substances.)

Yesterday I rode 70 miles with a hilly circle around a reservoir. Today I rode the same bike in town and back. I had no legs so rode the 42-17 instead of yesterday's 16 but I was even faster downhill. Exactly what I was talking about above.

Ben

[QUOTE=drlogik;20477066... There's no "rest" with a fixed gear, either going up, down or flats. There's also the mental aspect of riding a fixed gear. You cannot let your brain lapse one second. ....[/QUOTE]

Not really The huge gift of road fix gear riding is that your muscles learn to relax and recover while spinning, I find my focus is better riding fixed without me working harder at it.

If you are not there yet, ride more miles and longer rides fixed. 100 miles fixed, especially with wind or hills will go a long way. In my racing days, my fendered beater was fixed. Long ride day and rain? I'd check the weather for wind direction, find a town 50 miles upwind and rider there for lunch. Spin home. On storm wind days, the ride home was not fun unless my legs were really loose!

Ben

Perhaps it depends where you are riding? Since I don't ride fixed often enough, the bike will usually remind me once at the start of each ride that it IS a fixed gear, but aside from that one reminder I find the fixed gear gives me more relaxation. Of course, I also ride in places where I'll go miles between making a turn or sometimes even seeing another person. In a city, you'd need attention I assume. On open road though, you're just spinning and spinning and spinning for miles on end. Uphill, downhill, flats, it's all the same. Overall, very meditative to me.

Drag racing vs endurance racing. Each has a different look and I'm sure both are somewhere around the top 1% of humans for fitness.

Personally, the track racers look over-muscled, which I find unattractive. Meanwhile the road racers have skinny arms even for a skinny person. I would most rather look like a road racer who does some curls now and then.

There is a good point here.

Fitness minimizes it but so does learning to cooperate with the bike rather than fight it. Over time riders get to know how to ride more efficiently, not waste a bunch of energy. Several years of riding and it is much easier for me, very natural feeling.

Sometimes roadies will act like it was some superhero thing to have ridden fixed gear and I want to say that it really isn't that difficult. Heck, if I can do it...


-Tim-

I think its fair to say that you're both more fit and more experienced than most BF users Tim

Wait, are you saying you cruised downhill at 50+ MPH on a fixed 42x17 drivetrain? That's something like 260 RPM! I have no reason to doubt you... but this seems pretty incredible.

that doesn't mean he was going 50+, it just means that he didn't get passed, which can also be accomplished by riding 0.5 MPH if no one else is around

I did say those were crazy rides. And those years were the crazy years. (Post TBI, years before the counseling and therapy that are routine now.) And yes, I was pedaling ridiculously fast. Funny, when I rolled onto the island of Alameda where I lived, I would not have a single sore muscle in my legs, even after that 1000' climb.

I'd never do that now. I value my life to much. (I doubt I ever hit 50. But I did go d*** fast; fast enough that cars had no issues simply staying back and watching.)

Ben

I bought my first 10-speed in 1967 and count my miles from there. While I only raced three seasons, I piled on nearly 30,000 miles those years. Didn't own or drive a car until my early 30s. Never done fewer than 2,000 miles in a year since sophomorer year n college. After my divorce, 2003, did a bunch of years of 6-7,000 miles. It all adds up.

Ben

Awesome. Ever go through the Caldecott Tunnel on a bike? I used to commute to Berkeley from the East Bay, and I was sorely tempted to try it on several occasions late at night, to avoid the 1000 foot climb over the Oakland hills over Fish Ranch Rd / Claremont. Heading east, the tunnel is all downhill, so it seems quite do-able.

Fixed gear is a better workout in my experience. Rather than pulling a brake lever, you push back against the pedals to slow down. No coasting. No shifting to an "easier" gear.

What if you ride brakes on your fg?

What if you don't coast? What if you have the ability to shift into a larger gear so that you can still apply power/torque when you'd be spun out downhil on the fixie?

What if you shift to a "harder" gear?

I have always used brakes, good brakes. I've had knee issues since 1977 and known I could destroy them anytime I wanted or bite the bullet and put on and use a $50 brakeset (and get sweet handholds for climbing; handholds I need far more riding fixed than I do riding with gears. When I started, it was as race training and discipline and done on road bikes we simply replaced the rear wheel of. I went up hills I'd have had to walk down if I rode brakeless.(or go down at a snail's pace).

Plus, having an engineer's mind, not having a front brake always sounded to me, just dumb. Kinda like taking the big flaps used for take-off and landings off an airliner. "Ah, control tower. we took the flaps off, Direct us to a runway twice as long. We'll be hitting it at minimum flying speed, 250 mph." Why? Saves weight and air resistance. Improves fuel economy. And its's cool. Joe does it.

Ben

What if, what if, what if....

You can what if all you want. My points were clear.

[MENTION=408499]mrmb[/MENTION] your points were good, I'm just trying to get you to think about it differently. While the FG does sort of force your ride to be more difficult, there's nothing stopping one from mitigating your points by just putting out more effort on a geared bike.

One legitimate counterpoint is that a geared bike enables one to make their ride more difficult in high speed situations when you would otherwise be spun out on the fg.