Interesting statement about riding fixed always mentioned is that it improves your pedaling technique. I will certainly agree as when you get used to the continuous revolutions, you begin instinctively to adapt into a smoother, more energy efficient way of propelling yourself forward. Less twisting and ‘battling’ with the bike than what you see with rookie cyclists. It’s amazing how much not being able to ‘cheat’ by coasting focuses your mind on making the most of your pedaling power.
Another interesting detail I have been battling with for a while is how to go down hills at a super-fast cadence, without bouncing too much in the saddle. I used to think this was mostly due to my saddle being too low, so fettling with that means I have it at the optimal height now, but it still didn’t eliminate all the bouncing, particularly when my cadence was nearing 140rpm or higher.
Two ways around this: either refrain from allowing yourself to pedal at such a pace by feathering the front brake when going down hills – or, bite the bullet and begin learning how to pedal fast without so much bouncing. Having been a chicken and tried the former, I stumbled on a solution to the latter as I experimented with a smaller sprocket on the back than I use normally – giving me a higher gear ratio and requiring more power to get to a high rpm.
Fiddling with this I discovered that I wasn’t able to smoothly reach the higher rpm I was used to with my ‘normal’ pedalling technique (or I could, but it knackered me out sooner). I had to start both pushing the pedal down, as well as pulling it up. Using the higher gear made me pay more attention to the full revolution of the pedal and be able to do the motion properly, something people either describe as ’scraping’ the ground as if you were a bull waiting to charge, or playing the cartoony roadrunner bird. I’ve tried this before on the roadbike, but somehow because there is less ‘immediacy’ about the revolution as you can always coast, I found I hadn’t really internalised this motion the way I could do now on the fixie.
In the process of practicing the ’scraping’ I also discovered that I have a significant muscle imbalance, with my top thigh muscles, being far stronger than the thigh muscles behind. This is probably only natural and is easy to aggravate when cycling when going up hills as one is more inclined to push the pedals down than pull them up. Interestingly, I have also recently had some knee aches and pains, which I worried would be aggravated by using a higher gear on the fixie. No such trouble though, as long as I scrape with the pedals, as opposed to drift back into my old style. The breakthrough though was the insight that if I use the ’scraping’ technique when accelerating my rpm and when going at a really high rpm, I somehow become glued to the saddle and stop my former bouncing around. For the first time ever I was feeling like Mark Cavendish when going down a really big hill and nearing 160rpm.
Yesterday I was also out on the road-bike to do some more cadence training and was feeling a little silly going around the park concentrating intensely on sustaining over 90 rpm cadence in the gale force wind. I ended up on the small chainring most of the time, but felt the lessons were begin to sink in. The trick is to pedal properly without having to think about it. Am some time off from that yet, but concentrating on this as an area to improve on definitely is paying off. Moreover, both going up and down hills is going better these days..
