Disclaimer: Laws and regulations regarding fixed gear bicycles and bicycle brakes vary by city, state, province, or country. Be sure to check your local jurisdiction’s specific requirements to make sure your bike meets the requirements.
It started with a simple premise: What if I rode my fixed-gear bike for 100 miles?
That’s much longer than I’ve ever ridden that particular bike, but much shorter than I’ve ridden on modern geared bikes with all the bells and whistles. It will be a simple, experiential, and at the very least, a good day.
Alas, in cycling, simple things are never as simple as they seem. I suppose I could have thrown on a pair of shorts, tossed a water bottle and snacks into the backpack, and ridden some unplanned routes like I do when commuting with fixed gear – but this seems like a Too lazy to pace 100 miles, even though this is my 85th century ride.
The devil is in the details, as they say, and I had to weigh several factors. First, the hills. The altitude means your knees are stressed when going up without gear, and even more so when going down. Routes also need to be considered to avoid the hassle of speeding up and slowing down at busy streets and traffic lights. Gear and accessories are then added to a bike that wouldn’t normally be there – essentials like water bottle cages, road pedals, saddlebags and a Wahoo computer. In the end, I had to decide how much to stick to the fixed-gear ethos at the heart of this experiment: shorts and a backwards baseball cap, or a helmet and lycra?
Eventually, I tackled these issues one at a time in the week leading up to the big day. Once Saturday arrived, the task seemed simple again: pedal along the dotted line on the bike computer until I got home again. Eat, drink, ride the same gear, and travel 52,800 feet over and over again.
The joy of the journey is that complexity is never too far away. Riding the same gear all the way through the Sonoran Desert and the outskirts of Phoenix was a stark contrast to the more sophisticated bikes I rode 84 centuries ago. At every critical moment, a new idea comes to mind. I decided to share some of them with you Cycling Weekly Hopefully it inspires you to embark on your own journey and see where it leads you.
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My fixtures were the best $400 I ever spent
(Image credit: Logan Jones-Wilkins)
I purchased and built my fixed gear bike in 2019 and it has been a trustworthy companion ever since. At the time, I was excited about the prospect of stationary tools, but had no idea what fun it would bring me.
I separated the fixed gear into sections, starting with the frame and ending with a pair of grips. The frame is a black Dolan aluminum track frame, which cost me a total of $175. It’s perfect. I mean, when the lock is on the street, it’s very sturdy and completely inconspicuous.
Next comes the moving part. Luckily for me, I only needed four of them: wheelset, crankset, bottom bracket, and chain. At the time, I was living in Richmond, Virginia, and Facebook Marketplace was a happy hunting ground for all of these parts, which cost me a measly $132 in total.
Five years later, all of these parts are exactly the same.
Other parts have been changed. I added fixed-gear pedals with a powerband to help with stopping, new tires, grips, and various handlebar and stem combinations from my ever-growing collection of spare items. But for the most part, the bike has remained unchanged over the past five years of consistent riding. At some point I know I’m going to have to replace the chain, chainrings, and bottom bracket, but not yet. This bike is still the best $400 I’ve ever spent.
The most important thing in riding is rhythm
(Image credit: Logan Jones-Wilkins)
As I rolled the fixture out of the driveway on a cool November morning and began my journey, I still wasn’t sure how it was all going to go. Will my legs spontaneously combust when I pedal non-stop for 4 hours and climb a mountain? How could it be my ass feels After being locked in the same position for five hours? Will the gear I’ve been riding for five years be too small when clipped in and fitted properly?
I got some answers right away. A breeze blew in from the east in the form of a slight headwind. In theory at least, the headwind of a fixed gear could become a liability. In practice, it answers the gearing problem quite elegantly: if the gear seems slightly too big, pedal harder and get more aerodynamic power, and the big gear is no longer an issue.
When the route changed direction, I sat up a little, got more comfortable, and picked up the pace. As the route went uphill, I refocused my attention on the pedal stroke and rising and falling with the terrain. As the course descended, I focused on managing my speed and cadence so as not to be overwhelmed by the rapid turns of the pedals. The key to riding fixed gears is to manage your rhythm and focus on form while decelerating into traffic lights and accelerating away from intersections.
There is power in going back to basics
(Image credit: Logan Jones-Wilkins)
During those first few hours, as I learned the rhythm of extended time on the bindings, it became clear to me how much riding a geared bike is a blind pursuit. Insouciance can be therapeutic, but it can also prevent cyclists from understanding the process of riding and how to ride better.
Gears, like other modern conveniences, are great for creating efficiency. Where it gets boring, however, is in the technology.
Taking the time to improve your pedal stroke can promote what some call the mind-to-muscle connection. This neural connection between muscles and the brain is difficult to quantify, but the idea has become popular in the weightlifting and crossfit communities as a way to improve performance by consciously focusing on muscle recruitment.
Basically, if you think about which muscles you’re using and what other muscles you can use, you’ll activate more muscle fibers and you’ll see better results.
Much of this is highly speculative science; however, in a sport that relies on repetition like cycling, there is power in muscle memory. Compared to other endurance sports such as swimming, running and cross-country skiing, technique tends to receive less attention in cycling because converting power into speed has always been seen as king. But this technique is still very important, especially in the quest to get stronger.
When riding a fixed-gear bike, cadence and torque change naturally, creating a different focus with each pedal stroke. The same feeling can be found during low-cadence intervals, however, during long fixed-gear rides, the relentless feeling is more internalized than the limited time of the interval.
Cycling can be monotonous or dynamic
(Image credit: Logan Jones-Wilkins)
For the first three hours of that fixed-gear century, the ride was a joy. The one major climb I had to do was a nine-mile trek up a straight road through the Sonoran Reservation with a 3% grade, and it couldn’t have been better. It set a three-minute PR because the rig proved perfect for tempo efforts on shallow slopes. My stance felt solid, which I worry every time someone trades their bike for a grand outing, and I was far from a wreck because the anxiety of the unknown about fixed-gear riding caused me to be overprepared for the first time in my life.
However, this excitement faded over the next two hours. Going downhill proved to be much more strenuous than going uphill. My saddle position, without any room for fine-tuning the position while coasting, became cumbersome. After a few hours of speed management, my knees started to deteriorate. My hands, without the hood to support them, became restless, alternating between drooping and tops in various sub-par positions. When I returned to the streets of Phoenix, the traffic lights became more frequent.
As the interruptions became more frequent and frustrating, I took my foot off the accelerator, opting to pedal with minimal effort for comfort (a nice attribute of fixed gear is that on the flat It is easier to travel easily on the route, the system has very little friction and can roll forever).
As I shake off fatigue, I reflect on my riding and keep coming back to the balance between simplicity and complexity in riding. To express this balance in different terms, intrigue is always relative and always changing. The key to a pursuit like cycling can be monotony and energy at the same time.
In retrospect, this 100-mile ride was not an extraordinary endeavor. In fact, when all the data was finally tallied up, the statistics for the ride were pretty normal. Over the 100 miles, I averaged 18.8 miles per hour and 141 beats per minute. To me, that’s about average. However, I discovered many takeaways during this normal, extremely monotonous ride that, regardless of intensity, helped me more than any five-hour training ride.
Still, the next time I pull out of the driveway on a bike with ticking gears and a freewheel, I’m glad I have a choice. Another set adventure is coming; I may just have to wait a while for my landing gear to return.
