West 5 Cycles
Cycling, fixed-gear bike building and life on two wheels onlyArchive for Tips & Tricks
Singlespeeding on a mountain bike
Not wanting to completely ignore those of us who have mountain bikes still littering the back of the garden shed from those days where that was (is) still the bike to have - why not put it to good use and turn it into a single-speed for a new lease of life?
Don’t know about you, but it does seem that the nineties in particular made people part with their previous cycling preferences and leap on the mountainbike bandwagon whether there were mountains nearby or not. A little like the 4×4 fever that gripped the nation, most of whom can today be found in London where the biggest off-roading is over speed-humps. So my guess is that there must be a ton of bikes lying around, the product of new years resolutions of bygone days, bought in a whim before the realising that all those gears, ideal for off-roading, actually makes riding on tarmac a drag. You pedal like mad and still stuggle to keep up with anyone on a road-bike. Well, why not try something different and turn that mountainbike into a cool single-speed - build strength, technique and look cool, while having the bike easiest to clean and keep running smooth for miles.
Another great article on Bikeradar gives an insight to how single-speeding can make that old mountain-bike feel fresh and fun, by turning it into a minimalist machine.
Recycle your old bike - turn it to a singlespeed!
Now a lot of time on this blog has been devoted to the fixie fever that has gripped me and many others out there on the road and I’ve also written at length about building your own fixie from parts begged, borrowed, bought but not stolen. However, as my still recovering partner can attest - fixie riding is not all without hitches - it certainly takes some getting used to, namely that age-old program in our brain which says - if legs are tired, coast a little to recover.. well, that doesn’t apply to fixies as he painfully discovered. (Actually there is a way to learn to recover on a fixie even as your legs are spinning around, but more about that some other time)..
Before you take the plunge and go all fixed, you could reap the benefits of a single-speed: better training, practice the idea of fixie riding without the potential painful side-effects and have a bomb-proof commuter where winter grime is as easy to wash of as grabbing a bucket of water and tossing it over the bike. What I’m talking about of course is turning any unloved bike you might have around (or can persuade a friend to part with) and giving it a single-speed make-over. It’s the easiest and cheapest way to feel the thrill of a new bike - revamp an old one!
Bikeradar has this excellent how-to article about converting a bike to a single-speed - also have a read through the comments, some of which offer some useful addendums to the article, including the benefits of fixie vs. single-speed and dangers of using chain tensioners on fixies.
Training: Gadgets and Software Sense?
Training for long periods of time, whether you are doing it to lose weight, reduce stress or build up towards a specific event, is hard work and demands a lot of motivation. After the initial love affair of our new found sport tails off, we begin consciously or unconsciously to look for little motivating factors to help us sustain the efforts involved and get out on our bikes, nevermind what the weather is doing. Some make it a point to race whoever comes in their way out on a training run, others monitor their weight with a vigilance resembling obsession, others rejoice in riding further, longer and faster than they did before.
Whatever your choice of measure, what they all have in common is trying in some way to capture a sense of progress, improvement or development - how we are better today than we were before, because we intrinsically understand how important a sense of progress is to our motivation to keep going. If you can’t see any change nevermind how much effort you put in, however persistant you might be, sooner or later it will begin tasting like wood all this hard work. So we try, in all different ways, to nurture our motivation and egg us on to become all that we can be.
Needless to say, companies out there have all realised the promise of wealth and fame in delivering great tools to help us on our way and today there is an amazing variety of both gadgets and software to choose from, all vying for our attention as the toy to keep us on track towards our goal.
