Yeah, but the roadies with their derailleurs, brakes, brake lines, etc. never look as good as FGs. Plus it is nothing like pissing off a roadie when you pass them on your FG.

Well yesterday I did drop an entire group ride (10 people, 5 fixed/5 road) for about a mile and then I dropped back into 2nd or 3rd. I wanted to see if I could actually catch up cause some of the dudes on FG's are fast as ****. That and its always fun to challenge your friends haha. 46/17, 23's

well put

I'm friends with a lot of the cycling team at my university, and I see one of them on his road bike regularly getting out of one of my classes. We try and race each other, and I won the last couple of days, but then I realized he was just using his clipless pedals with street shoes.

He brought his clipless shoes the other day, and I got absolutely smoked, as would any fixed gear rider against a geared road bike.

More likely they're pissed because they can guess how pointlessly smug you are over it. Plus they know you'll probably run out of steam as soon as you can duck down a side street...or maybe that's just me.

And if you think that road bikes never look as good as fixed gears, oh man, you should'a seen the one I saw on Wednesday.

fixed gears are fun yes, but they will never be faster than a road bike. although i have passed a few roadies with spandex, clipless and all that jazz, most still beat me. it's always fun to draft behind them though. (sometimes i do return the favor)

i don't know what you are talking about, but having brakes, derailleurs, etc. is pretty darn good looking. they are not in the same league to be compared anyway. road bikes=storming the open road, fixed gears=town/city nimble-machine.

no, they're certainly pissed because they paid 5k for their bike but can't move it faster than a punkass child with a conversion.


cause we're stereotyping for fact right?

Smokin' roadies.

I often ride my FG with spandex, clipless, and all that jazz simply because often that's how I ride my road bike. :D

Only if they are not trying. I can on average beat about the bottom 20% of roadies on any bike. Fitter people, well I can't keep up with them on anything.:o

Maybe if you changed your gearing to like 44/16 you'd be able to keep up with him in the higher end speeds? It'l take you longer to get there but your top speed would increase, I think.

OK, this thread is getting silly. If Chris Hoy came down here and puttered around on the Platte River path on a Kilo TT I bet he could hold his own against the fleets of entry-level Giants creaking under the weight of helmet mirrors and Whole Foods jerseys, so let's dispense with the generalizations, right?

Lots of the people in my town who buy road bikes put in maybe 20 miles a week and work full-time jobs. I, on the other hand, have nothing better to do than sprint across town to nap and drink beer all afternoon. So yes, I can keep up with the road bikers.

A person on a fixie, keeping up / or passing a roadie ... is like Sabine Schmitz passing motorcyclists on the Nürburgring , in a ford tranzit van.

Its not, that one is so bad arse ... but rather the other that really needs another hobby. : o )


.
.
.

I'm just the opposite, actually. I love my FG for the open country when I can develop a rhythm and just let my legs turn, turn, turn.

Can we draw a distinction between passing someone and beating someone. How many times do you "smoke a roadie" but they have no idea they are in a race, they are just riding for themselves. Sure I'll pass so called "roadies" frequently but I'm just zipping across town and got nothing better to do than push super hard for 3 miles, that does not mean I am faster or beat that guy, it means I happened to be moving a higher speed at that point in time. Ride your bike for you, no one else and don't call a pass a race or a person in spandex a "roadie that rides 20 miles and works full time" if you don't know that. A cyclist is a cyclist just like you are so pass the guy and give him a nod or better yet break his wind for a bit and start sharing the love. I can tell you when I get passed by some kid on a conversion with deep v's who cuts me off and is obviusly "racing me" it doensn't motivate me to smoke him it just makes me think ill of the kid. It doesn't make him faster it makes him annoying. Ok I'm done venting :D

Me on roadbike = faster than me on fixed gear.

I'm a 49 year old fixed/single speed/road bike rider - I just like to get out on a bike when I can. My basic fixie is 52/16 geared pista concept on heds with tufo tubulars - I can deal with the road bike guys easily (90 cadence comes out to better than 24mph) on flat terrain, but on hills they leave me far behind. I would hesitate that a good track bike is faster than a road bike as it weighs less and is better aero, but we don't have gears so terrain becomes the differentiator.

serious road riders are 99% of the time going to be faster than serious track-bike-on-the-road riders. as soon as you think you're keeping up, they shift and disappear.

Gentlemen, let us stop all this sabre rattling and chest beating about racing each other....whether fixed, SS, 10spd Shimano, 11 spd Campag or IGH, we're all part of the human race and whether we like it or not we are all participating in this unavoidable "RAT RACE" for which there very few winners, so let's just enjoy our wise choice, whatever that may be, and ride our bikes......(I could beat the lot of ya) ;)

No, usually not. if the guy has full racing kit and a good bike, I let him pass.

When I first got my fixed gear, I could always beat my friend that rode his specialized allez going up this one hill. But probably it was more mental than anything because with fixed you know you have to speed up and get over the hill fast, and not take your dilly dally time getting over it because if you go too slow you'll end up really mashing hard while not really moving much. Also it helped that the cranks would come around again from the momentum of moving forward, which helped me push for the next pedal stroke, while for him there was this dead zone in his pedal stroke.

But its true on flats, roadies dominate me. My same friend when racing on flats, I max out at 23mph. He can shift down and all of a sudden drop his cadence and be doing 26mph while I'd hanging on for my life with my legs and butt bouncing out of my saddle.

I dominate the flats, usually get dropped on hills, but make up for it on the descents

If you are faster than the road riders you ride with, then you are obviously not riding with very fast road riders.

I ride with a group twice my age...So yeah I can keep up but I get pretty tired towards the end. I did one ride with a 52/17 and that had me in pain.

I can actually climb faster in 42/17 than I can on my geared bike. It seems hammering on the pedals and the fixed assist really helps.

The lighter composite bicycles are stiff and compliant like no other. They are lighter and more efficient than old steel. Not to say that steel is inferior but carbon bikes with tightly spaced gear ratios are a helluva lot faster than my fixie or 5 speed cluster.

I thought it was funny when some capri pant wearing kid passed me on his FG, and commented "nice spandex Lance". I was in the middle of my weekly longer ride(80-90 miles and about 5000ft elevation gain), and he's obviously going home after class(he had text books and a lock on his rack).:rolleyes: