Wear the right gear and cold mornings can be a pleasure to ride. |
Riding to work on a
bicycle through the warmer months is a healthy and enjoyable way to travel. You tend to arrive at your desk smelling
fragrant (if your work has shower facilities) and feeling wide awake. And a well paced commute also justifies the
odd dietary breach...
However, once the
clocks change, the warmth bleeds away and the light fades. The fields become
barren and colours congeal into greys and browns. And you get to work rattling
with images of potholes looming out of the dark, cars kicking grit off the
road, arctic winds and slushy puddles. But all these brutal experiences are
tempered by the grim satisfaction that you’re as hard as nails.
Unfortunately, as I
discovered two winters ago, my delicate road bike isn’t as hard as me. Components
that clicked and whirred with the love of lubrication through the warmer months
became neglected in the darker, colder months. Quite
frankly, I didn't fancy standing in the freezing cold scrubbing chains and
cogs. Without trying very hard, I
managed to destroy a lot of the bike's moving parts that winter. It was a
costly lesson.
In the Autumn of 2010 I
got my hands on a fixed wheel commuter. The Charge “Plug” was my choice mainly due
to its distinctive appearance. I commuted on it through the hardest winter in
recent memory. The bike was ridden on country lanes and city roads, mainly in
the dark. Over five months I rode eleven miles into work and back;
approximately 400 miles a month, clocking up 2000 miles in total.
I received the Plug in
bits and had the option with its “flip flop” rear wheel to try riding it in its
freewheel capacity. A little nervous of the Fixie experience, I decided to try
the bike out like this first. Less than five minutes on the road like this made
me realise a fundamental lesson. I had very quickly discovered that riding a
fixed gear bike with a freewheel
cassette is pointless; it's like
fitting tyres to a Sherman Tank.
Never ... Stop ... Pedalling |
Back home, I
flip-flopped the wheel onto its fixed cog. This time, I barely made it off the
drive before experiencing the true nature of the Fixie. Completely unaccustomed
to powering a crank that is directly connected to the movement of the rear
wheel, I instantly found my legs wanting to freewheel. I was fighting the
pedals as they rotated under the power of the rear wheel, . Nervously I set off
down the road, this time aware that the bike was truly fixed. About thirty
minutes of riding later, I was becoming a lot more relaxed with the Plug,
cruising down the road on this handsome shiny bike. It’s bigger tyres were still
smooth enough to purr quickly over the road. The geometry of the frame, whilst
more upright than my road bike is sufficiently rakish to enable me a sensation
of speed as my legs [constantly] powered the pedals.
Less than an hour into
my maiden voyage I experienced my first big mistake. I was on the approach to a
roundabout when I discovered that muscle memory and the urge to freewheel activates
as soon as your guard is dropped. Unlike the approach to Give Way junction
where you are generally expect to stop, it is preferable to carry your momentum
through a roundabout and so cyclists like to freewheel towards them, looking
for gaps in traffic as they approach.
Not only did this
experience make me feel like an idiot, it reinforced upon me the intrinsic
connection between a fixed gear bike and the human pedalling it. It is
fundamentally different to a "normal" bike. Not only with the
constant pedalling; whereas geared bikes use smaller and larger cogs to enable
easier pedalling up and down hills, a fixed gear bike uses one gear and demands
greater efforts from the rider, both up and down those hills.
I would like to say
that this was the first and last time I was almost spat out by my bike, but
over the next few weeks I found new and
more interesting ways in which to almost kill myself. It got to the point where
I started wandering if the Plug had been made from the parts of James Dean’s car,
the Lil’ Bastard. But in moments of clarity I realised that it wasn’t the case;
on each mishap I had only myself to blame. I started to become one with the
bike. But as my confidence grew, it was soon the dangers of high speed
pedalling that made themselves known to me.
I first encountered
this going down a nice big hill. As you can imagine, travelling downhill will
result in you gaining speed. Because a Fixie needs to be pedalled at all times,
you either have to start applying pressure on the pedals...in the other
direction, to slow the bike down or you slow your descent with the brakes ...
whilst still pedalling. This can often be happening at over twenty five miles per
hour. If the bike happens to go over a small bump, or you lose focus for a
fraction of a second, the upward motion of the crank will literally throw your
foot off a normal pedal. I can assure you that it is impossible to put your
foot back onto the pedal whilst travelling at high speeds. This means the other
foot can’t pedal properly and is also thrown off, leaving you with your legs
akimbo, trying not to make contact with the impromptu food processor whirring away
beneath your crotch.
You may think that I
didn’t like riding a fixie, but you’d be wrong. The thing is, I needed to tame it.
Or rather, I needed to program my brain to ride it properly. After two months
of my arse bumping out of the saddle and my legs flying off the pedals, I started
to master the finer points of riding this kind of bike. Then I took the final
step and became at one with the Plug... Whilst gently whispering sweet nothings
and blowing softly across the handlebars, I removed the normal pedals from the
frisky beast and with great trepidation, attached my road bike pedals. This may
seem a little suicidal, but once I got past the “clipped in to a death machine”
paranoia, I found that the cleats allow you to pedal with greater ease, and
quicker too!
It was this leap of
faith that resulting in the taming of the Plug. After clipping into the pedals
I became a Fixed Wheel aficionado. Because you are literally connected to the
machine, it no longer throws you off the pedals. Counter-intuitively, cleats were
the deal-clincher.
I found the Plug to be
heavy considering its minimalist approach to components, but still relatively
fast given its upright seating position and wider tyres. I enjoyed the
pseudo-hoods on the Plug and found myself switching naturally between the top
bar and the horns as I would on a road bike. The Plug soaks up road damage comfortably,
mainly through the tyres. But bumps are always going to be traumatic on a Fixie,
due to the way they jar the rhythm of pedalling, that’s just the way it is. But
the actual impact is dealt with well and the bike rides comfortably, but
responsively. It’s well balanced. Through all the miles and potholes, it didn’t
puncture once. The only major issue I
have with a fixed wheel bike for commuting is if it had punctured, I would have had to remove the rear wheel with
spanners in order to get do a roadside replacement of the inner-tube. This
means carrying heavier tools every trip, and messing with bolts and such,
possibly in the dark.
That aside,
maintenance is where a fixed gear bike comes into its own ... the Plug didn’t
require any expensive intervention. This bike was ridden hard; I cleaned it
twice and oiled it when I remembered to (which wasn’t very often). The bike was
intentionally abused, there's no point testing a winter hack on a velodrome...
It had to put up with a stupidly hard winter and some dreadful road surfaces.
Although hitting a pothole on a fixie isn’t remotely enjoyable to the rider,
the bike didn’t falter once.
Should you buy a fixed
wheel bike, you may find, like I did, that your muscles develop in order to
compensate for lack of gears. In other words, they will grow because they have
to. I haven’t been able to run tests this winter on my power output, but I know
I have considerably stronger legs than I did this time last year. The effort
involved in riding a Fixie is therefore something you become accustomed to, as
your legs rise to the challenge. However, there is always a limit on the type
of hills you can tackle without gears, so I advise carefully planning your
routes around steep hills, not up them.
So if your legs get
bigger, do you get faster and can you ride longer? I hoped that riding a Fixie
through the winter would yield improvements through the sportive season. That time
of year is approaching and after 5 months of riding the Plug I’m back on the
road bike. This year I completed my first serious group ride, managing 69
rather muddy miles at just over 20mph! Last year, my average in a group was around
the 19mph mark, generally in better conditions. For this reason, but mainly to
save my beautiful road bike from unnecessary damage, Fixed gear commuting is
now a permanent fixture for me.
Good job, keep it up!
ReplyDeleteDid laugh at the point that you were approaching the roundabout!
ReplyDeleteCompletely agree with the sentiments, riding fixie during the winter is my preference and I love it.
ReplyDeleteThe feeling of cruising along it unrivalled and I feel like a stronger ride for it, the only times I wish I had an extra gear is when the wind is really kicking up in to my face.