The only time I ride single speed on the road is timetrails on my fixed wheel track bike. I use the same gear as on the track - 88" which is fine for me in the event, but hard work riding out and especially home again!

I used to ride around 66" fixed a long time ago which was ok for most things on a winter type bike. Dave Fearon rides fixed most of the time so he would be a good one to ask. Riding in a group on singlespeed isn't always such a good idea if everyone else is on gears. Hope this helps Ady, but probably didn't provide much of a distraction from work.

Well, my commuter bike, (or more correctly, do pretty much everything bike) is 42x16, which equates to 71" according to this Seems OK to me, a decent pace on the flat, and can ride it up hills (mainly cows**t corner coming home from work) with not too much trouble.

If you want to try it out for size, give me a shout.

@NickB wrote:

The only time I ride single speed on the road is timetrails on my fixed wheel track bike. I use the same gear as on the track - 88" which is fine for me in the event, but hard work riding out and especially home again!

I used to ride around 66" fixed a long time ago which was ok for most things on a winter type bike. Dave Fearon rides fixed most of the time so he would be a good one to ask. Riding in a group on singlespeed isn't always such a good idea if everyone else is on gears. Hope this helps Ady, but probably didn't provide much of a distraction from work.

Aye! 66" was the staple diet for winter training when I was with the club first time round. Had a single speed rear wheel then for that very purpose!

No distraction from work though, no... ended up having to do a bit... 🙁

@tthew wrote:

Well, my commuter bike, (or more correctly, do pretty much everything bike) is 42x16, which equates to 71" according to this Seems OK to me, a decent pace on the flat, and can ride it up hills (mainly cows**t corner coming home from work) with not too much trouble.

Yes, I was thinking of a gear of around 70". Cycle to work scheme is luring me, so fancy building a single speed bike around something like a Cotic Roadrat frameset. Can use the bike as a base for all sorts of fun then.

You can get that frame in two lengths, for flat or drop handlebars. Think it's a disk only frame too. Also, if you are building from scratch On-One make a couple of SS specific frames, Pompino and Pompetemine I think they are called. Have a look at the Genisis Day One though, that's what I have and it's ace!

@tthew wrote:

You can get that frame in two lengths, for flat or drop handlebars. Think it's a disk only frame too. Also, if you are building from scratch On-One make a couple of SS specific frames, Pompino and Pompetemine I think they are called. Have a look at the Genisis Day One though, that's what I have and it's ace!

Yeah, have been looking at the Cotic site. Really like the idea of such an adaptable frameset. You can also mount cantilever brakes onto the . The Day One looks nice as well! Have you got discs on yours?

No disks on mine, there was no option last year when I bought it. By the looks of the website that's only the Alfine bike anyway.

Good to see that yet another rider has seen the light and decided to get rid of all those inefficient, noisy and hard to clean gears. My gear choice changes all the time depending on what I'm doing (racing, training or general riding). For general riding my favourite gear is 72" which is small enough to get up the hills but not too twiddly on the down hills. As a schoolboy I rode 59" fixed all Winter long and could spin them legs round even on long down hills in the Peaks, but now as a long in the tooth vet I find it hard to get over 200rpm these days.

Enjoy the "feel of the fixed" and stick with it to get the most benefit.

Cheers

Dave

The concensus over many years and from all sorts of cycling people generally is that about 90 rpm is an efficient balance between grunting and twiddling. Hence, as Nick says- 66" is a good compromise. At 18mph cadence is 91.6rpm. A useful gear for a work or winter bike. Matthew's 71" seems a bit high to me. 18mph is 85rpm, but as he is now a more mature rider, his youthful souplesse may have declined a little. Seems to me that in many situations, approx 90rpm resolves as the default. I remember many years ago, Alan Kemp doing his steady 60 mile Saturday morning training ride, followed by an open '25' in the pm in about the hour. Alan would be on gears , but mostly in the 91". This is 91rpm. Carl R is an interesting example in his BBAR chase. If he does a steady '50' in 1-45 and is mostly in about 115" then he's pedalling at 84rpm, which would be a bit of a grunter. However, he's using 180mm cranks, so this brings the pedal speed back up towards the 90rpm. For interest -when Nofearon does the hour for a '25' in a medium gear event, this is 116rpm - GASP!. One of my memorable rides was the Westwood Tandem '30' in 1965 stoking club founder member Jack Gee on the tandem trike. Jack really was a twiddler, but for this event he put the single fixed up to 76". We did a 1-14 which is 107rpm, but it was a very windy day with a good westerly wind. Progress along the East Lancs towards Manchester was frantic. My new anti-ice machine is an old steel bike frame with a trike conversion axle bolted on. Weight must be 30lbs+. It's on single free, so I did the cadence calculation and have fitted a 60" gear which gives 90rpm at 16mph or 100rpm at 18mph. Back to efficient cadence - watching Lance time trialling, he is always doing 100rpm+. Not so long ago, enormous gears were the norm at 80rpm and less, but Fabian and David Millar are pedalling much faster these days. Try it - cadence(RPM) = speed (MPH) x 336 divided by gear(" for 700c & 23mm)

Blimey Dennis I'm impressed, you sound like you know what you're talking about. So chaps, whilst we're on technical matters, I've been giving some thought to increasing my aero efficiency. Do you think a pink frame or a red frame is best?

Red is always fastest, fact.

2 things about Dennis's post. I'm not convinced he is 15 years old.
Single-fixed tandem trike, you must have at least won your category that day!

Dennis was riding fixed when I was wearing nappies, 😳 but I have one problem with average cadence.......the wind and the hills lead to massive peaks and troughs in your average that you don't see on gears as you simply change gear. Therefore if riding gears you may range from 80 - 100 rpm to achieve an average of 90, but on fixed you could range from 30 - 150 rpm to achieve the same average.

So why ride fixed?

Cos you have to be able to pedal very quickly and smoothly to do 150 rpm for any length of time and you have to be flippin strong to climb a steep hill when the bike feels like it is towing a mini behind it! and guess what all the others around you on gears are soft pedalling on an easy gear so they are not getting the same benefit.

Result when you are riding along at 18mph on 72" fixed on the flat it becomes very easy and when you have to deal with wind and hills you can cope because your body has trained for it.

So bottom line is don't worry about the gear as your body will adjust and soon it will feel right and when it gets too easy, just up the gear.

P.S. Blue is more aero for boys and pink is more aero for girls, I would have thought that was obvious! Red is for misguided football supporters.

You clearly have too much time on your hands Dennis - which is nice. If you had come on the off-road ride at Cannock yesterday you wouldn't have had the mental energy to do those calculations! By the way, some helmet cam action of the Monkey trail which we rode at http://www.youtube.com/user/NickBXride

Good stuff though, and crank length is very important. I've got 165mm on my track bike like most people (as oppossed to 170mm on my road and mountain bikes) and that makes twiddling easier (same reason as stroke length limiting revs in a petrol engine) and should also let you get lower as your thigh doesn't come up as high.