sbskates

anyone used not a fixie but a single speed for off season training? i have one built up 39/16 gearing.
if you have did it work and how,,, what did you do?

Carbonfiberboy 

What I'm doing. I'm using 42X17. Some other riders are using 53X19 and 39X15. We're doing this just once a week on our weekly hilly, fast group ride. We're working up to doing our normal hilly rides, though we haven't yet tried the 15%-18% grades. Those may be a little much. We're using our normal road bikes, just not shifting, so if something goes bad or one can't keep up, one can always make that clicking sound. We average 17-18 over 50-60 miles, climbing 50'-60' per mile. We have some riders who use gears because of knee or hip ailments, etc. That keeps us honest so we don't loaf on the flats and gentle downhills. During the week, we ride with gears.

I think this regimen is having a beneficial effect, but we won't know until February, when we can try our harder rides, geared. Only bad thing we've noticed so far is excess wear on that one cassette cog. Maybe if this turns out to be a good thing, we'll all build SS bikes with great thick rings and chains for winter riding. Or convert our usual rain bikes to such. Better/cheaper drivetrain wear might be a good enough reason by itself.

Agree SS is better than fixie. Can go further and is a lot less dangerous. We've had two people in our group rather badly injured on fixies. And one local death.

cedricbosch

Riding a singlespeed provides absolutely no training benefit. On the other hand, riding a fixed gear smooths out your pedal stroke noticeably.

BloomBikeShop

There are two good reasons to ride a singlespeed for offseason training:

1) Easier to maintain through bad weather.

2) It's a fun way to switch things up and avoid boredom.

So if you have one built up, ride it like you would any other bike.

astroman

i always feel much more tired riding ss than fg, though i've no idea why. maybe i sprint harder, maybe i'm more confident and can push things more.

as a training tool in general though i think ss makes you fit for the gear you ride and can make it harder to deal with bigger and smaller gearings when you hop back on the geared bike. that's been my expereince anyway. i seem to lose the ability to push a 53/12 or something and spin a 42/21 after doing 50/18 only most of the time.

what happened to the two folks riding fg? just curious, had a confidence shaking accident too, now moving between ss and fg.

Carbonfiberboy 

Both fixie riders suffered an instant of brain fade in an emergency situation in traffic and attempted to stop pedaling as they grabbed the brakes. Both were catapulted off the bike and into the ditch. Injuries were to clavicle and ribs. Both were extremely experienced riders, but had much more geared time than fixie. The dead guy locked up the rear in an emergency turn. I didn't know him. The consensus in my group is either ride fixed or freewheel, but don't switch back and forth.

I'm only doing ss once a week, on my group ride. The difference there for me is that because we have geared riders with us, we often ride at cadences over 130 on the flat, though we aren't necessarily happy about that! I find I've gotten much better at putting power on the road at high cadence. My legs seem stronger, too. Because of the wide ranges of cadence that we employ, and the hills we climb, I seem to have no problem riding the geared bike. But I have not yet come back to ride one of our standard courses on a geared bike.

I've read that modern pro coaches find no benefit from fg riding, putting that down to the fact that the chain can push the pedals around, which allows dead spots to develop in the stroke. Of course these are elite athletes. SS seems to be different in that regard, as one always has to keep a taut chain, just like on a geared bike.

I can see that fg would help if one weren't already trained to ride smoothly at cadences of 120 or so.

astroman

nasty accidents, very sorry to hear that. i had an over the bars too, not fun, and dented my confidence as well as breaking my elbow. my personal feeling is that when accidents happen they happen much worse on fg, but no doubt i'm simply old and risk averse these days...lots of folks swear by it...me, not so sure anymore.

i hadn't thought about the benefits of different cadences. maybe cause i ride single mostly and have never properly learnt a good geared constant cadence. but that makes sense.

as you say i feel a big difference too between the active versus passive drive, especially on flats when, once speed is up, you just kinda follow the bike along...and always have a dead spot moving from fg to ss, so i know my pedal stroke gets lazy on fg...that's why i think i feel mroe tired after ss than fg...i do feel like i am working harder to keep momentum...

interested to know whether you have solid performance increases over time from the ss...

Carbonfiberboy 

Perhaps you are working muscles on the ss that you don't work on the fg. If you ride all winter on the ss, it'll be interesting to hear how you do if you go to geared once the season starts.

I do notice solid performance increases on the ss, now after about 6 weeks of group ss rides. Our group average keeps climbing. I have much less trouble on the climbs and can go longer standing. I can also sit and grind more strongly, so that standing and sitting cadences are very similar on long steepish hills. On the flats, maybe I'm not as wasted on the next climb if we go fast on the flat between climbs.

But we'll see how that all plays out later. I am also finding that I do better if I take it pretty easy during the week and don't do as many midweek rides as I'm used to when doing geared group rides. This ss nonsense must put some stress on the old legs.

vger285

https://www.vandesselsports.com/crb.html-i got this bike in the fall and plan on riding it all winter for training,everyone else i ride with are on 20+ speeds, they pull me on the hills, but on the flats, i can hang pretty good, i can tell im getting alot more training in then they are,especially on the hills, some of them it's everything i can do to turn the crank, 16/39 which i think is a perfect set up,i put some yellow fenders on it and it looks sweet!even tho it kick's my butt!Thats what winter riding is for!So come April we'll see if it did any good,Its hard to justify spending some big bucks for a SS,it's kind of like a step back wards,you know what i mean? but i think you just got to go beyond that and work it! Im pleased with it!

vger285

https://www.vandesselsports.com/crb.html sorry!

Carbonfiberboy 

Nashbar also sells a SS conversion kit for Shimano hubs:
https://www.nashbar.com/profile.cfm?c...All%20Products
for only $20 right now. With this kit you can use your regular road bike with vertical drop-outs, as long as you have a 39T chainring. I'm running a triple with a 42, so this kit would overgear me more than I can handle on the hills we ride. But maybe I can replace my 42 with a 39. I'll look into it.

Spookykinkajou

Personally, I can't see any reason why you'd pick a freewheel over a fixed gear for a one gear only bicycle.

If you have any sort of discipline you can just shift to a gear you want to train on and ride it like that all the time.

As far as training goes, riding a fixed gear will force you to pedal all the time which in turn might program you to pedal more on the geared bike. It also might help make you stronger since you can't downshift on the hills, headwinds, etc.

One drawback to mashing away on a one gear bike is it might make you gain weight (muscle mass) and not just your legs since you use your upper body so much more - this assumes you are riding on hills which require you to stand. I know I shot up nearly five pounds this summer after my geared bike broke and I started riding the fixed gear on all my long distance rides. The first few centuries were pretty tough but I adapter rather quickly, and can now ride just as far as my geared bike. It'll be interesting to see in a few weeks when I get my new geared bike built up how my fitness has changed.

Carbonfiberboy 

We've had a couple riders turn out to ride with us on fg. Next time, they'd switched to a freewheel hub. Pretty hard to keep up with strenuous riders on geared bikes if you're on a fg. Not as big a problem on a ss.

Yes, of course that's what most of us do: just don't shift. It would be nicer, however, to not wear just that one cog in the cassette, that one chainring, and that skinny chain. Expensive. Better to have a dedicated ss setup. I'll try converting my rain bike for ss next winter, then convert it back in the spring.

I've also gained a little weight, mostly in my legs. Could be winter weight, too. I'm trying to learn to stand without using my upper body. It seems quite possible, but it's hard to get the timing and pedal stroke just right. But it took me forever to learn to spin, so I'm hopeful. I'm thinking I'll lose weight again once I start riding long distance again in the spring. I'm hoping it'll work like a bodybuilder cycle: bulk up and then lose fat.

Astroluc

I bought an old 80s 10 speed converted to SS for commuting last winter (16/42 gearing) and have been riding it about 10 months; my commute is 8 miles each way. My "normal" riding bike is a proper geared roadbike w/ a 9 speed setup.

After a few months of riding my commuter I noticed that my strength had jumped more so than if I had not been riding my SS. A lot of that has to do with not having the option of dropping into a lower gear just to get over a hill.

All in all I would say my experience on a SS has made me a stonger rider. just my $.02

SamDaBikinMan

Riding a fixed gear bike out on the streets sounds like a monumentally bad idea.