I Hated Fixies So I Rode One For 30 Days.

I have never ridden a fixed-gear bike in the wild. Around a velodrome, yes, a couple of times, didn't really like it. Found it, frankly, terrifying, but around a city or on actual bike rides, never. Yet, I was a professional cyclist for 10 years. I've been riding bikes for over 30. That is going to change. This is something I need to be able to do. I can ride pretty much any type of bike fairly well except for these. This feels like a missing piece of the puzzle. It's something I should be able to do. Plus, the fixed-gear scene has long been cycling's coolest subculture. Who wouldn't want to look young and hipsterish and carefree whilst bombing around town? Yes, okay. No, perhaps more to the point for me having realized some years ago that cool and me were fairly incompatible. Generations of riders used fixed-gear bikes for training. Maybe they were onto something. Maybe riding fixed will make me a better rider. I am going to ride this fixed-gear bike 120 kilometers a week for five weeks to see what happens. Will I like it? Could I learn to like it? Will it make me stronger? Will it make a better bike rider? Can it make me cool? Stay tuned to find out. This is the climb I'm a little bit nervous about. 500 watts, 70 RPM, running. It's really cold. Going 155 RPM on a downhill around a wet corner, that was a heart-stopping moment. Here we go then. I've been avoiding this moment for 33 years but I have a fixie and now I need to ride it. If I'm honest, I've never really seen the point of them. I like brakes. This one has brakes but a lot of fixed-gear bikes don't. I like them. I also like gears. I think they're good but what I really, really, really like is being able to freewheel, so not actually pedaling and still moving. On this bike, clearly, I can't do that. Having said that, now I've built it up. I think it's pretty cool, actually. If you want to see the video of me building it, then it's over on GCN Tech Now. One of the really lovely things, actually, was all the positive feedback. In fact, this was universally loved in the comment section. Okay, maybe not universally. Some people I don't think can appreciate art when it's in front of them or maybe they're just not cool enough. I was also quite surprised. There was a little bit of gatekeeping from the fixie community. I don't know what I've got to do to win those people over but hopefully, a few hundred kilometers might do it. I'm not only going to ride a fixed-gear bike because I love riding mountain bikes, gravel bikes, and cyclocross as well, but what this bike will replace, temporarily anyway, is any other bike for my commute to and from work, which is 20 kilometers each way. I tend to do it three days a week, what with disappearing off and filming things. On the way in, there's two short, quite steep little climbs, but it's otherwise fairly flat. The way home has three also short and less steep climbs, one of which is the big ring challenge, which I have sprinted up every time I've ridden it since I started work at GCN 12 years ago. Because I'm essentially going to be filming this video before and after work, much of the camera work will therefore be mine. Apologies for that, but to help, I have got myself one of these, which is a Hover Air X1 Pro Max. It is a self-flying drone which uses some software to basically recognize whoever has turned it on and it will then follow that person, i.e. you, until you put out your hand, at which point it will land back down again. It's amazing. Now, how it follows you is entirely up to you. There are various different modes on here. It will fly up to 42K an hour, which should be just about fast enough to keep up with me uphill. Anyway, it films in 8K and you get 16 minutes of flight time per battery as well, which is just the ticket, really. You want to see? Go on. Of course, you want to see. Come to me. That is quite cool, isn't it? Wow. Sod's law, this is actual day one. It has at least stopped raining, but as you can tell, it's not quite the beautiful sunny day that we had yesterday when we were filming everything else. Anyway, not the start of dreams from a fixed-gear adventure, but this is reality and this is what I'm going to be facing in November in the UK, but I am excited. Bring it on. Early doors, still absolutely heavy. Okay, first climb of the commute coming up. Going to get a bit of speed up. About 7%, maybe. 500 watts, 70 RPM. Oh, God. Slow down with my legs. Okay. Now, this is the climb I'm a little bit nervous about, I think. It's pretty bumpy. Oh, God. 700 watts. 600, 500, 40 RPM. A bit of a wrap. Right then, first commute done. I survived, crucially. A couple of slightly sketchy moments. One where I forgot that I couldn't freewheel whilst trying to overtake someone on the bike path and I nearly sent myself over the handlebars. Didn't, but it would have been embarrassing. Then also, going 155 RPM on a downhill around a wet corner and then thinking that was a stupid idea halfway around. That was a heart-stopping moment. I think I can get over that. I can improve. Yes, that was cool. Let's see if I can have something to eat now, possibly a little lie down. Second commute in and I've got to say, it's fresh in my mind. My wife doesn't normally pass comment on any of my bikes, certainly not unprompted, but as we were leaving the house this morning, she very kindly said entirely off her own bat, that bike is absolutely disgusting, by the way. I'm not sure she's a huge fan of my hand-painted forks and stem, but quite a lot of you weren't either, really. I actually am really growing to like it. I wasn't 100% convinced when I finished my masterpiece, but now, particularly on these gray November mornings, it's quite cool and it's a head-turner for good or bad. Now, the other big news this morning is the state of my legs, which is very, very bad, worse than my paintwork if I'm completely honest. I explained about the DOMS that I got after my first day of commuting. Well, today isn't actually the day immediately after that. Yesterday, I was filming a load of indoor training sessions for the GCN training channel and I did three basically full gas high-intensity interval sessions. My legs were utterly screaming to the point where afterwards, I felt like I was midway through a stage race and I hadn't done any training. This morning, I'm okay cruising along now at 20 mile an hour on the bike path at 190 watts, but oh my God, those little ramps where I'm having to do like 450 watts at about 40 RPM, I wish I was on one of my normal road bikes if I'm totally honest. Still, I quite like having a challenge and that's definitely what I've got on my hands. End of week one and I'm having a blast. This is cool. My first thoughts on this fixed-gear bike is just how responsive it is. I've been told to expect it, but even so, it's blown me away. You stamp on the pedals and it surges forward, which is pretty cool considering it's not a super high-end carbon fiber frame. I think it all comes down to the efficiency of the drivetrain. I did check actually, I reached out to our mates at Ceramic Speed who are like drivetrain efficiency experts. They said, funnily enough, they haven't tested fixed-gear bikes, but they've got data from about 10 years ago that says if you get rid of the rear derailleur, then that's like a 2% efficiency saving plus the chain line is bob on. That's going to be another few percent. Potentially, it is like 25 watts saved at about 500 watts. That's something you can definitely feel. My legs are blooming sore, but what's worse is braking, so literally pressing the wrong way around on your pedals in order to slow down. I've had doms for the first time on a bike for goodness knows how long. I've literally been able to feel it walking down the stairs the next day. I'm hoping that's a good sign because if you get doms, then you're obviously doing some kind of damage to your muscles. Fingers crossed, I'm feeling quite optimistic about that. All in all, it's pretty blooming good. The only slight problem I see is that whilst the bike feels really fast, it's actually not. I'm about 2k an hour slower than I would be for the same power output on one of my proper bikes. I think maybe, well, it's obviously not an aero bike, is it? Also, I think I'm probably just losing out a little bit and maybe I'm riding a bit conservatively as well in traffic because I'm mildly terrified. Maybe that's it. One of the reoccurring themes from my bike build video, other than I'd ruined a perfectly good bike and I was less a cycling Banksy and more of a cycling Banksy, was that I'd done it wrong and it would break within days. Now, I am no fixed-gear expert, so before I spent too long riding it, I got in touch with a couple of no-nonsense guys who would know for certain if it was going to last. Calvin and Truman from Park Tools. Guys, I need your help on this. There's been a few comments under my fixed-gear bike build video and I'm not qualified to answer them, but I think you are. Firstly, can you build a fixed-wheel bike out of any old parts or do they need to be fixie-specific? Great question. It is. Can is a key word in there for me. Absolutely, you can. Now, is it ideal situations and ideal equipment? Possibly, but if we go back in time, everything used to be a fixie. We have a fixie right here, a theoretical fixie. So, here we are. Si is riding down the road. Truman, he's pounding that 5218. Beefcake. Man, okay. I'm tensioning the top. I've got my tension on top. It's saggy below. Look out. Stop, stop. Something's going to come. Whoa. Now, I am tensioning under. It's saggy on top. But in both scenarios, where is it pulling the wheel? In both scenarios, it's pulling the wheel forward. The stress is the same. The bike doesn't care. Does the wheel care? Oh, these spokes are going to be stressed this way. Now, these are stressed this way. The hub that you chose has a disc brake. So, it's meant, it's designed to encounter braking forces. And riding forces. Riding forces and slowing forces. That hub is designed for it. The frame is not really experiencing any additional forces that it is not used to or designed for, especially because it's a disc brake bike. So, it was designed for braking forces, which are more substantial than going forces. I'm glad you're saying that, okay. Because I sort of came to that conclusion. But like I said, I don't feel qualified. And then the other one, I suppose, was about cranks. So, I had someone say that you need to run a square taper crank. Now, my experience with square taper cranks from back in the day was that actually they were a bit crap. And I'm very glad that we moved on. But again, I defer to your experience here. Is there a superiority to square taper? No. Part of mine, no. And then the last one is a really technical point. But so, having never had anything to do with a fixed gear sprocket before, I just ordered one and screwed it on. I've been told I've screwed it on the wrong way around. But the reason I put it on the way around I did was for chain line. So, my chain line is bang on. But does it matter if you have the flange inboard or outboard? We don't think so. For this particular hub, it's very important. You wouldn't even be able to ride this bike. Yeah. There's no room for a chain here at all. But if you look at the Paul, that nice Paul's hub you have, big shoulders, big shoulder. You could easily run it either way as long as you're nicely aligned with the front ring. So, the front ring dictates which way to go. Amazing. Guys, I love talking to you. I feel so relaxed about my fixie now that it's not going to fall apart underneath my immense power. So, this is great. I like a bit of straight talking. It'll work. This is what the bike industry needs. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Cheers, guys. Have a good week. See you later. Well, that is a relief. Plus, it is good to hear people making cycling less rather than more complicated. Riding the saddle this morning, so I don't have to go quite as hard. I wonder what's at 35 RPM in the saddle. That's got to come in. Really cold. Another morning, another wet morning. I thought, I keep banging on about this killer climb, that I would stop and show you what it's like. Can you see how ferocious and horrendous that is? It's like a cross between the Koppenberg out of the Tour of Flanders and maybe Alpe d'Huez. The steepness and roughness of the Koppenberg with the length of Alpe d'Huez. Okay, all right. I mean, it's literally nothing. 100 meters long maybe, about 10% average gradient. That's according to my Wahoo just now, but it is a lot on a big gear. See if I can find another angle, make it look worse. Look, the camera flattens it, all right? It is much worse, and then that's the running. You just have to trust me. It's really hard. 5 RPM, 350 watts, and it's really quite hard. 4 past 8. I've arrived sore, really bloody sore. That was not a recovery commute in any way, shape, or form. Halfway through roughly, I didn't have to ride to work today. Thank God, because I am in bits, actually in bits. The DOMs from the first commutes have now gone, but instead, my legs are just knackered. Yes, I rode in and out three times this week, and I don't even know how I'm going to cope with my weekend bike rides that I do for fun. I'm not terribly happy. There was a little bit of progression early on. I got the hang of riding a fixie. My legs worked out how to brake using the fixed gear, but I definitely don't feel like I'm improving now. Getting up those little ramps is getting increasingly difficult. I did relearn how to do a track stand, so that was nice, as in a bit of progress. Generally speaking, I'm a little bit down in the dumps about it. What I thought I would do is phone someone up. This person is called Sid Barras. Super Sid was his nickname. He was one of the most successful British professional cyclists of all time. He is of the generation that used to spend all winter riding a fixed gear bike for training. I thought maybe he can shed some light on what I do about this fatigue. Is it just that I need a lighter gear? Is it just that I'm going to start improving? I don't know. Anyway, I'm going to give him a shout. He was my director of sportif once for a couple of seasons. He used to get quite frustrated because I was rubbish, basically. Sid, hello. It's Simon Richardson here. Simon, how are you? I'm very good. You're on this radio down. How are you? I am very good, thanks, Sid. How are you? I've just got in off my push bike. Brilliant. I've done about two and a half hours or something like that. It's bloody freezing, I'll tell you. That is cool. How's your form? The last time I had form was 1987. When I started club riding, that would have been 62, I reckon. You couldn't afford to ride gears through the winter. That's the truth of it. Most people, you just couldn't afford it, so you had a fixed wheel. Did you carry it on? Once you became a pro? I didn't. Although, I did have one winter. I was quite old. In the late 20s, I did ride a single free, just a single free wheel. Tell me how to pedal the noise and what's about that. If I said to you or I told you that my gear that I'm running on my bike now is 52-18, you reckon I should make it a bit smaller? I think that's too big. I dropped to a 20, 52-20 and try it. Really? Okay. Try a 20 experiment. You'll know after two or three rides. Go 52-19 and then a 20. Brilliant. All right, mate. Cheers. Good to talk. You too, mate. Bye-bye. I need an easier gear. I really hope that works. What's going on with my hair tonight? Not much goes on with my hair ever, but tonight, it seems worse than normal. Big excitement. Okay. Got myself a 19. This is what Sid recommended. Is he going to be a game changer? My fingers are firmly crossed. All I need to do now is adjust the length of my chainstays, so the dropouts, to accommodate the new larger sprocket, and then wait for tomorrow and see how much better it is. Please hope it'll be better. Giant spanner. Damn it. My throw axle's over there. Nice. Sun's out. Little gear ratios are out. This is going to be a good one. I haven't actually really gone anywhere yet this morning. It's certainly not at high speed, but already, even just that one-tooth difference, feels like it makes quite the change. For example, I'm doing 25k an hour right now at 70 RPM, which is about five RPM more than I would have done on the old one. I'm feeling optimistic, actually. I think maybe Sid was right. Lots of you in the comments were right. I'm just overgeared. Watch this space, folks. What's my verdict on the easier gears after, well, 30 minutes of riding? The killer climbs were definitely better. Now, I still had to go up and flat stick, but as you might imagine, it was easier to put out more power at a higher cadence. I just simply didn't have to produce quite so much force. It's basically easier to do 550 or 600 watts. That was good, but it definitely still doesn't turn my fixie commute into a steady zone two spin. Then on the flat stuff like this, I think it's just making me go a little bit easier. All in all, I wouldn't say it's revolutionary. It's not like gears or a freewheel, but it's definitely better. This is it then. Final ride in before the conclusion of my little fixie project. I'm a little bit torn actually as to what to feel right now. On the one hand, I'm incredibly glad that I don't have to ride this bike into work tomorrow, but it's also been good fun. Genuinely, really good fun, really interesting. I'm blooming love this bike. I might spend a bit more time on this ride thinking it all through. It's officially the last fixed-gear commute, at least that I have to do, not voluntarily. Here we are then at the end of my fixed-gear journey. Well, is it the end? Who knows? I know actually. I'll tell you in a minute. What have I learned? First up, fixed-gear bikes are fun. Without a shadow of a doubt, this has been a really cool few weeks. I'm very glad that I now have a fixed-gear bike at my disposal. That is cool. Have I mastered it? No. Well, possibly a bit. I don't feel as competent on it as I do on all my other bikes, but then I've only spent four or five weeks on it as opposed to 30-something years. I still get anxiety when I have to bunny hop up a curb because obviously, you can't freewheel. I haven't died. I haven't crashed. I can do skids. I think I'm going quite briskly on it, but just don't take my breaks. I need my breaks, basically. Has it made me fitter? No. That's my big disappointment, actually, from all of this. I genuinely thought that riding a fixed-gear bike would make me fitter. Admittedly, four or five weeks is not long, but I thought there'd be a bounce off it that I would get some kind of lift. I absolutely haven't. What I might do, or what I will do, is have an easier week and then try again after that because obviously, you don't always improve when you're training. You improve when you recover. I will check back in with you guys in the GCN show just to let you know whether or not I definitely have or have not improved. I think my big problem with it is that on that fixed-gear bike, all of my rides are the same, basically. I've got some bits that are really quite hard and some bits that are easy, but really, they're all in this homogenous blobby type training. It's polarized to an extent, but it's not like I can ever focus on anything. Two max hill reps is hard enough to make your legs hurt, but it's not actually meaningful enough to do any kind of training. If I was going to do hill reps, I'd do six or 10. I think that's my issue with it, is it's just too in the middle for actually any kind of training improvement. Have I become cool? No. Next question. Do I like it? I do like fixed-gear bikes. As I said really early on a few weeks back, the feeling of efficiency with the bike, it's really cool. I've turned a nice aluminum bike into an absolute ripper and that is great. Do I think it's the soul of cycling and the purity and all that kind of jazz? No, definitely not. Gears are good. They're invented for a reason. They allow us to ride at 10k an hour and at 70k an hour. You can go faster, you can go slower. Do you know what I mean? Gears are better, but there's definitely a place for a fixie. I'm here for it. What is going to become of it? Well, I'm still going to use it 100%. Do not worry. There was a moment a couple of weeks back where I seriously considered putting a GRX Di2 rear derailleur on it and running it as a one-bike geared bike. What I'm going to do with it is I think if I've got it there to ride once a week or a couple of times a week, then I can ride it and love it because it will be a different type of riding, not my everyday. What I'm actually going to do in the short term is stick a pair of mudguards on it because it makes total sense for rousing around on wet days. There is essentially nothing on it to go wrong. It's going to be my wet weather bike for the winter. As you can probably tell from some of the footage that I've captured over the last month, it's been raining a lot. Here's to a dry bum. Tomorrow, I'm not going to ride it tomorrow. Do you mind? I'm going to ride a bike with gears. I'm thinking it's a canyon aeroed kind of a day, full aero bike, fast, easy. That's what I'm going to ride tomorrow. Anyway, I hope you guys have enjoyed this little look. I certainly have, actually. Like I say, it's been a really cool few weeks. Let me know what you think. If you're already a fixed-gear rider, am I now a fixie rider? Have I passed the test or am I still not quite enough? Because I know you're pretty tough gatekeepers. Also, if you've never ridden one, are you tempted? I think you should be. If nothing else, I reckon it's probably the best value bike you can buy at the minute. There's something to think about. Anyway, hit the thumbs up button if you've enjoyed this one. I'll see you on the next one. Bye, guys.