Monday, April 24, 2006

One Gear No Coasting


Someone asked recently what the advantages of a fixed gear are. Well, the main reason I ride a fixed gear bike is that it's a total blast. You get a real good feel for what your back wheel is doing and you can bleed off speed by placing a little back pressure on the pedals, which is awesome in a paceline. It also makes you stronger by getting used to just one gear, spin like hell to go faster, and mash like crazy to go up that hill. It can also improve your technique. For example; your climbing a hill and your too whipped to stand for the whole thing, so you slide back in the saddle, sit up straight, and push. This way you use more of the larger muscle groups. It also teaches you to spin, imagine going down a steep hill and you don't want to lose momentum, you have to keep up with the bike, so you spin(I've gotten up to 190 RPMs). Fixed gear bikes are good training tools. One of the members of my bike club made the under 23 U.S. team and will be training in Belgium this summer. His coach wants him to ride a fixed gear for training. If your feet are locked in with clipless pedals or a strap, toeclip, and cleat setup it can really help your pedaling technique, circles instead of squares. Last season on one of the Thursday night rides about 15 miles out I was spit off the back of the hammerheads paceline. I held on longer than I thought I would. It was the first time I rode my geared coastie bike. I settled in to a nice pace with a song from the goo goo dolls in my head, Boulevard of broken dreams I think. 7 or 8 miles later I started pulling in stragglers from the paceline. One by one they jumped on my wheel and before I knew it I was pulling about 6 or 7 guys back in, guys that dropped my like a bad habit a year before. As we crested the top of the last big hill I heard Andrew Douglas behind me say,"Does riding that fixed gear make you that strong?" I smiled and said, "Yes, it does."

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