Been riding a single speed all this year so far, my first. 48/15 ratio. I figured that would be fine as the MTB I was riding all of last year had a 52 tooth outer (?) chainring and i never got out of top gear on it cept to climb. I mostly commute with some pleasure riding along the lake or what have you. I like to go fast, I think what's killing my knee is the starts ... it's always a race and since I live, work and play downtown there's a lot of stops and starts.

My question to you all is, how messed up are your knees and what can I do, what do you do, to keep injury to a minimum? I don't really want to go lower on the gear ratio, I like going fast. I think the only reason I might go lower would be to learn catwalks
I'm gonna be 30 this year. I come from a background of skateboarding, snowboarding, bmxing and otherwise being hard on my knees. This is the first year that I'm taking cycling kind of seriously, it's fun, it gets me to work on time, it's practical and I have something to obsess over
I would like to do it forever, I don't want a bum knee to keep me from biking or hell, walking comfortably.

Also, it's only one knee .. my right, and it really only hurts when resting, like if I'm sitting at my desk all day or laying in bed/couch whatever. Is this normal kind of strain for biking? Never hurts on the bike, so I have been forgetting about it and going for broke on every ride :/

yeah, i bike daily and jog every other day. right knee bothers me too, but i don't plan on stopping.

my only hope is that there is some badass knee replacement technology developed in the next 20 yrs. I'm 32 right now.

better start saving up...

i ride my bikes, mostly my fixie, like 90 miles to and fro work every week up some big hills (and down, BRAKELESS) and my knees have been killing me since i started riding my fixie more and more. hell, theyre killing me right now and i havent been on a bike in like 20 hours. i can ride 60 miles on a road bike and not have knee pain the next day. i have a theory that in like 20 years all the hipsters and people who have suddenly started riding fixies (yeah, im one of em too) will be a generation with mass knee problems. every used-to-be-hipster when theyre 50 (in like 2035) will be writing on knee replacement forums. but by then i hope kickass knee surgery is readily available and cheap. today the medical market caters to baby boomers, but in a few decades itll be all about old timer hipster joint surgery. the comercials for hospitals would be so funny, thered be like a burnt out hipster and he'd be like "hi, im so and so i and i used to drink pbr every day and smoke lots of cigs, but i also rode a fixie. i had the whole campy setup on my 1978 schwinn, i even had a reload bag! but by 2012 my knees were ****ed up and i couldnt walk- that was, until i found the kind people at said hospital who replaced my knees. replace now and theyll even throw in free tatoo removal". ive started to save my pocket change for a new bmw fork for barspins AND the rest for knee replacement surgery. ive scheduled it with my friend who plans to go to med school , that he'll surgerize me when it comes time.

My knee pain went away when I geared down and stopped doing epic mountain rides on the fixed gear.

knee pain from biking comes from 2 reasons:

- seat too low (I guess that's not the case for anyone here)
- gear-inch too long. Basically, our legs are too strong for our knees. We should be pedaling higher rpms. That's definitely the downside of fixed gears.

sounds like tendonitis if it only hurts during rest

gear down for awhile and take it easy / get a good fitting / or let the problem compound on itself and keep you off the bike longer

i did read somewhere that the number of knee surgeries for the baby boomer generation has skyrocketed cuz they wanna keep exercising. something like this article. so i'd expect a lot of focus on these procedures over the next couple decades.

or i could take up basket-weaving...

- seat too high (hyperextending is bad)
- too low of a gear (spinning @ 120 when you're not ready is also bad)
- improper pedal/cleat position

the list goes on...

Ok, I should have said "the main reasons". When I look at people riding around town, way too many have their seats too low - much more than people that have it too high. And I rarely see people spinning too much, if they're not ready, they just won't spin as fast. The average person doesn't spin enough. Of course, if you're going downhill on a fg, that's another issue. I was talking about general cyclists.

And from the bikes I see in the SS/FG gallery, I can foresee many sore backs, stiff necks and numb wrists in the years to come That's unless people don't actually use their bikes a lot.

your gear is high. [86 gear inches I believe]. I was running at 82 and my knee started hurting, now I went down to about 73 and my knees are starting to feel better and it's become more enjoyable to ride.

Think of your knees as bearings the more pressure on them the less efficient and the faster the wear. A lightly loaaded faster spining bearing will run longer than a heaviely loaded slower moving bearing

wow, i was running 101 GI i think and now im at like 93. come fall, when i go back to school in pittsburgh ( a super hilly city) im going to swap out my 15tooth for my 17 tooth cog. philly is a great city to ride fixed in but when you get out of center city there are some hills and those hills kill my knees. well, id assume its a good thing to be about 20 years old and have daily knee pains attributed to tendonitis.