Is There a Single Speed Road Scene?
 

When I bought my Langster over the winter, the intent was to have a commuter bike that would give me an excuse to able to ride every day and also to use for everything from tooling around to riding with slower friends and family. The Langster would be my "not serious" bike, with the serious stuff left to my cyclocross bike and masochisitic riding associated with cyclocross.

Well, my two mile easy commute has evolved into hour-long training rides in both the morning and after work as well, averaging 16-18mph on the many paths in the DC area and 20+mph at Haines Point (This is not bragging, just a reference point). My 42x17 gearing, originally intended for poking into and out of traffic and hoping curbs is now used to spin like a sewing machine to keep pace with the triathletes and roadies at Haines Point. In short, my "not to serious" singlespeed road bike has become a very serious road bike, and has changed my focus as a cyclist with a concentration of developing myself as a singlespeed roadie.

So here's what I'm trying to get at:
While the singlespeed mountain bike scene is reletively well-developed, how developed is the singlespeed road scene? I'm not talking about tooling around the urban jungle on an e-bayed fixie, but getting out on the open road with just one gear (freewheel) on bikes ranging from stock manufacturer singlespeeds to high-end road bike conversions. And as the popularity of the singlespeed road bike grows, will manufacturers continue to create singular bikes to cover the whole spectrum of commuters, fixies, and toolers, or will they begin to create more serious, road-worthy singlespeed road bikes and accesories at the same level as is being done with singlespeed mountain bikes?

Note: This is not a freewheel vs. fixed thread. It's about identifying and hopefully growing a specific inter-cycling community.

There's no shortage of quality components suitible for singlespeed road riding. They're just not marketed as such. Singlespeed road bikes have no obvious "cool" angle for the kids and most serious roadies don't see the point since it doesn't have the much-touted training benefits as fixed.

"this aint a scene it's an arms race"

"This ain't rock 'n' roll This is genocide!" - David Bowie

Way to ruin everything.

A lot of roadies seem to like picking up a cheap SS/FG as an alternative like you did. Not sure there's really a need for a stock, high end SS to sell to that crowd. They'll probably want to build their own anyways at that point.

It's not my imagination, there's a gun in my back.

the only difference between a fix and and a single speed is a freewheel and a brake...
ANY bike can be made a single speed (well i guess not a penny farthing..), its even more adaptable than fixed gear. so there really is no need for a specifically made single, when you can make one so easily yourself if thats what you like.
most ready-made fixes come with a flip flop and a brake as it is. thats a much of a ready made single as you can ask for.

my daily ride is a single speed (with a fixed flip-flop that rarely gets used) road conversion. ive ridden it in groups with road racers and die-hard fix riders (some other members of this forum). as cool as it would be to see more people riding single, i think its counter-productive to try and divvy up the cycling community into all these little sub-sets. we can all ride together cant we? its one's own loss if they dont want to ride with people on different bikes.

Single speed road if not for commuting or stuffing around is not nearly as fun as geared road. SS mtb is better because it presents more challenges with climbs/traction/obstacles etc. While fixed road has its place in training, ss road has no bling, still freewheels so hasn't got the training benefits of fixed, wants to be fixed and geared at the same time and you can't race on a SS. And running a gear high enough to sprint in for a whole, otherwise slow, ride is no fun.

thats just plain untrue.

I don't know about that, I'm having fun and getting strong at 42/16. Hills, street sprints, spinning, it's all good.

15km there, 15 km back every day. well, when it's not raining 2-3 inches a day, like now.

lots of roadies ride singlespeeds. to my knowledge (and to their credit) the dc ones haven't bothered establishing any sort of "scene" around it.

the ones that i know are a lot more inclusive than most roadies given credit for. they're usually just happy if you can keep up and hold your line.

There are a fair number of long distance road riders who use single speeds. I've done 200K and 300K brevets on my Rivendell Quickbeam SS. Perhaps the best known long distance guy--Lon Haldeman--is known for riding SS on Paris-Brest-Paris. Kent Peterson out in the Seattle area has also done a lot of SS (and fixed) road riding. I posted some bnevet ride reports last year here on BF that you can find with the search function.

The majority of my yearly mileage is done on the Quickbeam, although this time of year I'm mostly on my geared bike for fast club rides and races.

I've found that 42x17 and 42x16 are the best gearing combinations for me. Hope this helps.

Dr. Bill

Do you really NEED a community ??

Can't you just go out and have fun with your SS ??

OK I'll agree with that. I'd hate to have to race on a SS.

Felipe in NYC has won a number of alleycats on a SS.

Too much to disagree with here.
A nice, light roadie conversion or something geared to 70"
inches or so is a great workout and fun to ride.
I switch back and forth between the gears, ss and fixed.
I love the speed of the geared bike at first but eventually
my riding gets sloppy. The SS is the best one of all to work
on technique because of the dead spot.

There are plenty of good quality single speed road bikes. It seems to me that the Langster pretty much IS the bike you are talking about. If you want something closer to to a racing machine, there are a lot of track bikes out there that might be your dream bike with the addition of road bars, brakes, and a freewheel.

If you're enjoying spinning 42x16 so much on the freewheel though I really recommend you try it with a fixes cog. I'm not arguing that fixed is better than SS. I just think it sounds like you'd like it.

if you can hang with geared road riders on a SS, go for it.. i know for some of the road riding i do with people we sometimes keep a pace above 20 for a while and go for 30+ sprints (34 on a flat yesterday was fun), and it would be hard for a SS to keep pace with that. but in terms of average speed or slower rides they could probably hang np.

singlespeed=freewheel.
fixed=dead spot training. I love training on a fixie. I'll timetrial on a fixie, it is more efficient, I'd give racing on a fixie a go but the variations between a 14% slope and a 60km/h sprint possibility means I'd compromise my best chances. A singlespeed isn't as fun to ride as a fixie, and if I wanted something to freewheel where I'd have to run two brakes anyway, I'll take my race bike out.

to train to spin, a fixie is the go because you will find yourself coasting if the option is there at one point or another.

I have nothing against SS road bikes, I just don't think they will catch on enough to cause a scene like fixed gears.

I totally agree. Go into the regional forums. Start or join a ride. Meet nice people. "But they're roided-out spandex weekend warrior types! Oh noes!"

I agree with all of this except I still believe an SS is a better spin machine because
the deadspot is more pronounced, especially on long uphills. Practicing an efficient
spin through that spot I believe takes more work than a fixie. I love 'em both and
prefer them over anything but the SS gets the nod for commuting cuz after an
8 hour day its just nice to coast down the huge hills we have in vT. Im off to
FLA in 2 weeks so Im gonna go 80" on the fixer :D
One thing we could agree on Im sure, is that when you get off of a one-gear bike
and onto a geared roadie you absolutely =F=L=Y=!!

Oh yeah...I run a coaster brake on my SS bike and it looks k3wL enuff to be
a fixie :p

have to disagree with you there. the fixed drivetrain carries your foot through the "dead spot" or the point at which your legs have the least amount of leverage on the pedals.

personal experience has shown that if i train exclusively on a fixed gear for a long period of time, my pedal stroke gets lazy at that point and i have to work on my form when i get back on the road bike. especially on climbs.

training fixed is great for other things though, like keeping my heart rate up and developing power at high cadences. singlespeeds can be great for these too.

mixing it up is what works best for me.

edit: too slow

Thanks to everybody for the responses up to now. There are a few points I would like to clarify:

1. By using the word "community", I in no way am alluding to a "SS Roadie-only" kind of scene, where anyone who is not a SS roadie is harshly excluded. The notion of exclusive cycling communities is more pronounced in the cyberworld than on the actual real-world road or trail, where the average paceline can include roadies, cyclocrossers with road wheels on their CX rigs, and MTBers on road bikes building up conditioning for off-road races.

By using the word "community", it's only in reference to SS roadies such as myself having a forum to communicate with other SS roadies, in the same manner that fixie riders can commune with other fixie riders about such things as riser bars and 650cc front wheels for bar spins. One thing I am exploring is gear for SS road riders. I understand that it is easier to convert a high-end road bike to SS than for the cycling indutry to create high-end SS road bikes, but still, the thought is about whether the evolution of the SS road bike will be towards commuters, messengers, fixies, or long-distance roadies.

2. Thank you in particular to Dr. Bill for sharing his knowledge of SS road riding. Hearing about the likes and SS cycling exploits of riders like Lon Handleman and Kent Peterson is one of the many things I was hoping to learn about in this thread.

3. From a personal standpoint, I feel that riding SS road has opened up a whole new world of cycling to me, a kind of adventure-and-survival aspect, that the one gear that I have will have to carry me through a whole ride, and only my creativity and adaptive technique will get that one gear to work on climbs, descents, sprints, and long open road stretches.

4. While I posted this thread with the intent of culling information from the poeple in the SS/fixed cycling forum, I would be interested in hearing from and riding with other SS road riders in the DC area.

That is all for now, thank you again for all of the responses, and I look forward to hearing more from everybody.

the answer is YES...






but it's underground.