It gets easier! On family days out my wife and I will split driving and cycling and meet at the swimming pool, boot sale, beach or whatever. (One drives, the other cycles and then maybe swap over for the return). We also have a tandem for fast family rides and the children both ride. Have you read "Long Distance Cycling" by Burke and Pavelka? Very good and an excellent section of fitting in rides with family life.
Good luck and see you in six years! (By then I hope to have done 300 miles in 24hrs on my fixie)

Wow.. sterling!

New On-One Pompino SSCX. Still tweaking the fit, but I have a feeling I'm really going to like this bike.

must have been an awesome experience to ride in New York City. We went there for the first time last fall and it was awesome, would like to go back for another visit. I just purchased my first fixed geared @ 42 and am loving it. Most of my riding consist of rural areas, which is not to bad considering not a whole lot of traffic to contend with. I think its cool that riding doesnt have an age limit. Keep on pedaling and keep safe.

Although I'm no stranger to fixed gear, I took a few decades off.. I bought a fixed gear bike last summer, luckily it has a flip flop hub in the rear. Too much traffic going fast out here in the suburbs of Chicago. I love the fixed gear for riding, but too many close calls, not enough acceleration at stoplights, etc.. I flipped it to single speed and tossed on a front brake- out of necessity. I also added pedals that can clip in on one side or use street shoes. Way safer to be able to put my foot down in traffic. The cars around here just don't deal well with cyclists, they either don't see ya or else they aim for ya. The remaining few who see ya are too afraid (or think they are helping) and stop traffic to let ya pass- that's even worse. If folks would just drive like normal (and not be distracted by cell phones and texting while driving) I'd have kept it as a fixed gear.

Oh, yeah.. I'm 57 and I'll ride all day and night-

i don't feel 40....but, i am.

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you was?

40 sounds pretty good to me, kid. LOL

ha, good question...don't know...every year feels the same. so, that's good!

kids, soccer and bikes keep me feeling young. although i suffered my first sports related injury last year with a torn acl from soccer. thank god for the bike...perfect for rehab and back playing 12 months later.

Don't get me started on age! I genuinely feel better, work harder and longer than ever I did in my forties and fifties ( and there are other, more marital benefits! ). Since discovering long distance fixed gear cycling last year my life has been revolutionised ( pun unintended ). The combination of just achievable goals and non impact aerobics, not to mention all the psychological stuff of challenges met, keeps me fit, sane, slim, and good humoured. Just ask my family!

Here's a pic of my fg set up for commuting:



The frameset is an 80s Fuji Del-Rey sb/pc sparkle black. The hbrs, stem and headset are all original. The gearing is 48x15. Brakeset is from Bike Island. Tektro complete set for 40.00USD. Sugino 103mm Track bb. The tubes are Forte puncture resistant and the tires are Schwalbe Marathon Plus 700x25mm. Over 4000 miles w/no flats...knock on wood.

$450.00 invested, overall. Includes lights, rack/bag combo, seatcover, etc. Had some stuff already. Wheelset is entry level, but solid. Cog is a Vuelta. Chain is a chrome KMC 1/8".

It's been a great fitness/back-up, change of pace commuter bike. Going to change out the fenders, though for the new long coverage Raceblades. These things are worthless.

Other than that no complaints. It's been a real fun bike. Glad I made the jump to fg. It's changed the way I ride my geared bike(s) as well. No freewheeling, anymore unless I'm absolutely topped out. And w/50x12 top end I've really got to be moving.

Calendar says I'm turning 50 this year, so I guess I qualify for a post? I built this up around SA's s3x hub and have put about 20 miles a day on it for the last 3 years.


My legs are stronger now so I'm getting ready to build up this 50's vintage Jack Holland road/path as a SS fixed.

I'll post some photo's when it's complete

42 here, only a few years of cycling under my belt. Converted my Surly Ogre to single speed for summer commuting. Hit the track for several beginner days and I was hooked. Turned the Surly into a track bike/commuter.

Thats awesome man (riding and bikes)

I'm 47 and recently built up an old stripped Lemond road frame into a single speed, with a coaster brake. It's fast, and easy to ride. I like feeling every bump in the road, it gets me up and out of the seat. I ride for fun and fitness.

----> pr0n thread. awesome.

almost 43. lowest bodyfat/best shape of my life thanks to cycling, fencing and boxing (wife says i should have been born in 1870, not 1970).

current stable is all fixed or ss (two sscx, Pake Rumrunner ss and a fixed Leader 722ts). had a CX rig with 105 drivetrain, but after a few months realized i didn't need the gears to get where i needed to go.

Like the sound of your stable. 54 and switched to fixed a year ago and not looking back. Really brought the fun back!

My first fixed gear conversion was in 1987 or '88.
I mean, I converted a geared bike to fixed, but, I know that the conversion was mutual.

I started riding ss mtb in 2002.

This June, I turned 57.

49 and today I got my first SS since I was a Kid. I've ridden all sorts of bikes but I am looking forward to the simplicity of my new bike.

Have fun with it! Post pics when you get a chance :-)

Why is this stickied?

Have I posted a photo of my SSCX bike? How 'bout an action shot?

Although I've been riding a fixed gear for over 40 years, I'd been reluctant to post in this group because I figured it was a bunch of egotistical self-absorbed hipsters discussing their stupid skidz stops, but somebody on the 50+ list mentioned that there was a 40+ group of fixed gear (and SS) afficionados posting here, so I thought I'd check it out. I gradually worked my way over most of the 20+ pages and I'm ready to add my two bits:

First, I refer to my bike as a fixie. After all the years I've been riding (at first in the winter when I was racing, then year round after I stopped racing), including lots of track racing (with a podium in the points race at the 2002 Masters Track Worlds in Manchester and lots of 2nd places at World Masters Games, Canadian National Masters Championships, North American Masters Track Championships, and a few wins at the Easter meet in Trinidad in the 90's, I figure I'm entitled to call it anything I want.

I can understand TT's feelings about the word "fixie," though. I feel the same way about the word "half-bike," even though I also drive a tandem. I really hate it when tandem riders call single bikes "half-bikes." Just plain stupid and disrespectful, as well as perverting the true nature of what constitutes a "full bike"...

Anyway, I started racing in 1971/72. I lived in Oakkland, CA at the time, and in addition to the road bike, I bought a Gitane Interclub track bike, which I fitted with a front brake and used on the road in the winter, running the stock 46x16 that came with it. I didn't realize that this was a track warmup gear, so I rode it on the flat and over the hills for a couple of years. When I moved to Vancouver, I discovered I needed to fit a rear brake after my first crash on ice in the winter, where I learned that you do not touch the front brake when it's icy! Since then, I've always used two brakes on the road.

(By the way, a fixed gear is a REAL advantage on the ice! Especially on descents, when you can feel just when the rear wheel has locked up.)

I started track racing at the old China Creek Velodrome in Vancouver under ex-pro 6-day rider Norman Hill, who taught us all to NEVER BACKPEDAL, it's bad for the legs, real track riders never do it, it's too sudden and just makes guys sitting behind get really angry. As a result, we never even used lockrings, and I still don't. I think they're more dangerous than they're worth, as they could cause the rear wheel to lock up if the chain falls off.

When I went to university up here, I rode up 1200' Burnaby Mtn every day in the winter on the fixed gear. With all the snow, ice, and road salt, I could destroy Phil Wood hubs and bottom brackets in one month of winter riding. I remember one evening, there was a foot of snow on the road, and I half-slid that bike all the way down the 5-km descent.

I had the Rodriguez built in 2009 after I broke my Benotto track bike that I was using on the road. That Benotto was what I raced on in the early 90's, when I was in my 40's, and when I set most of my personal best track times. I had hoped to ride that bike at Paris-Brest-Paris in 2011 just so I could say that I had used the same bike to set all my PB's between 200 meters and 1200 kilometers, but it broke at the head lug in September 2009. The Rod was built in October, and I specified S&S couplers, as I intended to do a lot of traveling with it. To date, it's been on ten round-trip flights, as far away as Hawaii and France.

I rode PBP on it in 2011 (and most of the brevets leading up to it), and in 2012 I used it for my three California Triple Crown rides (Davis, Borrego Springs, and Knoxville). As I've said, it's my main bike; it's used for commuting, training, track riding, organized rides, etc. etc.

One of the things I love most about riding my fixed is going on organized rides, like the big centuries, torquing up long climbs out of the saddle, passing guys on their $5000 carbon fiber bikes with the 11-speed Di2 and the carbon fiber wheels struggling up the climb, and it's all I can do not to tell these poseurs that they've just been passed by a 62-year-old dude on a steel fixed gear bike, see ya!

It wouldn't be the same with a single-speed. I think SS's are for wimps. Hard men ride fixed gears, and part of the joy I get is feeling a certain kinship with the real tough guys who raced on fixed gears over the badly-paved/unpaved roads of Europe early in the 20th century. This was a big reason for deciding to do PBP fixed.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the Rodriguez (built by Dennis Bushnell at R+E Cycles, Seattle, from True Temper OX air-hardened tubing):

My coupled Rodriguez fixed the day after I finished Paris-Brest-Paris in 2011 (just under 65 hours, done as three 400 km days).


The Rod the other night configured as a track bike at the 200-meter indoor Burnaby Velodrome (takes about five minutes to convert; a bit longer if I switch chainrings (and sometimes chain). I had specified split cable stops, so I don't even have to undo the rear brake cable anchor bolt. Oh yeah, I just swapped the fork for a 300-gram ENVE 1.0, just a super fork!:


Being a contrarian, I like to have one bike that does EVERYTHING. None of this stupid "n+1" nonsense for me!

Luis

Nice!