I’m not a big fan of Fixies. Don’t mind a low geared single speed though. I like to coast too much.
Megawomble64 on
Just an opinion: it’s a wildly different experience and on paper it’s simply less optimal for basically every application, but, you should persevere a little and see if it grows on you.
(Small aside, riding a fixie with a back brake and no foot retention essentially nullifies all value gained by a fixed drivetrain, you’re basically riding a single speed with added inconvenience and knee pain)
I absolutely love my fixie, I live in London and it just makes my commute so much more interesting. If you’re riding on country lanes it’s simply a bad choice, but imo in stop start traffic it’s just really enjoyable. All the clichés about it being “the purest form of cycling” and how it makes “you and the bike one seamless machine” are, imo, genuinely true. Track standing at lights, putting out a million watts to go up hills, wipskidding around the place, it’s all just fun. You feel so much control and feedback once you’re used to it and it just beats anything else. I also have a beautiful, light, stiff race bike with loads of gears and creature comforts, but I genuinely think if I could only have one bike, it’d be my fixie.
Put some foot retention on, if you don’t wanna ditch the rear brake, at least try not to use it, give it a few hundred miles to get used to preferably in traffic and see what you think then. I cannot recommend it enough.
2 Comments
I’m not a big fan of Fixies. Don’t mind a low geared single speed though. I like to coast too much.
Just an opinion: it’s a wildly different experience and on paper it’s simply less optimal for basically every application, but, you should persevere a little and see if it grows on you.
(Small aside, riding a fixie with a back brake and no foot retention essentially nullifies all value gained by a fixed drivetrain, you’re basically riding a single speed with added inconvenience and knee pain)
I absolutely love my fixie, I live in London and it just makes my commute so much more interesting. If you’re riding on country lanes it’s simply a bad choice, but imo in stop start traffic it’s just really enjoyable. All the clichés about it being “the purest form of cycling” and how it makes “you and the bike one seamless machine” are, imo, genuinely true. Track standing at lights, putting out a million watts to go up hills, wipskidding around the place, it’s all just fun. You feel so much control and feedback once you’re used to it and it just beats anything else. I also have a beautiful, light, stiff race bike with loads of gears and creature comforts, but I genuinely think if I could only have one bike, it’d be my fixie.
Put some foot retention on, if you don’t wanna ditch the rear brake, at least try not to use it, give it a few hundred miles to get used to preferably in traffic and see what you think then. I cannot recommend it enough.