I live in the U.S. and fixed gear TT bikes are almost unknown. It is my understanding that this is not true in some strange lands and some respected TT riders do this unusual pastime in competition. I would love to learn more about it. Gear selection and setup. Can a fixed be as fast on a TT or is this more for just PR kind of stuff? I would kind of like to do this on the cheap so any ideas in that respect are also welcome. How do UCI rules apply to this?

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WW Velocipedist Gargantuan

Perfectly legal to ride a fixed gear. And more efficient/faster as well. Obviously if you have a big gear it takes a bit more time to get 'er up to speed, but it should produce that high speed a little easier. Someone else will probably be able to tell you, but I think you are a couple of % more efficient.

You just have to have a front and rear brake. I don't remember if they count your ability to slow the pedals/rear wheel as a braking system, but if it does, you might only need a front brake.

The British 25 mile TT record was set on a fixed wheel.

45:57!!!!!!!!

Stuart O'Grady rode a fixed gear:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2005/gi ... ?id=wilier

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This board and the world in general would be a much nicer place if everyone could just take themselves a little less seriously.

Quite a few people did for the Prologue that year. Some Liqigas riders were also using twin Ghibli discs aswell. Garzelli was it?

Quite alot of blithering but the 25 TT is pretty ace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBdJf5OkUc0

Nice one even fasterson, great vid.
That guy was awesome, and at home with everyone, a really great advert for cycling.
Its got me started thinking on building a fixed for TT in the UK, anyone got a steel frame kicking around?

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Guildford/Woking is the home of F1.
We make loads of other stuff here too.

Or some track dropouts for a steel frame, as I alredy have a lo pro.
And I like brazing!!

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Guildford/Woking is the home of F1.
We make loads of other stuff here too.

And Bradley Wiggins was on fixed when he set the 10 record of 17:58

Don't be led astray, however; both records were set by world class pursuiters at the peaks of their powers, and were on their track bikes because they happened to be the best bike they had available, they wanted a training session on their pursuit bike etc. They would almost certainly have been faster on geared bikes, and Boardman admitted that he was spun out coming down the initial hill from Cumnor.

A geared bike is quicker, except for those very few occasions when you're on a dead flat course with no wind and have chosen exactly the right gear, i.e. a day when nobody changes gear all the way round. Then you save a few watts by not wrapping the chain round the tensioner wheels, and maybe a couple more thanks to the cleaner airflow with no derailleurs. Bear in mind that on every other day, people on geared bikes only have to gain about 1% in bio-mechanical efficiency due to optimised cadence to completely wipe out your better machine efficiency.

So, why do I ride TTs on fixed? Well, it freaks out the straight folks, for a start. There's a certain special camerarderie among the small subset of time triallists who are 'on the cog', and you can go up to them in the car park, stare at their their chainring and suck your teeth, making disparaging comments like "You'll be lucky to even get up to the start on that" (H25/2, for those who know it, is my local course)

If I were consistently missing out on the medals by a few seconds, I'd get a geared bike. As it stands, you'll find me somewhere in the third quarter of the result sheet so I'm only racing against myself, and I like riding fixed. It's a harmless perversion, but not a way to win prizes in road time trials.

Im almost certain he wasn't. He was on a Dolan TT bike with Blackwell wheels. I have the pic around somewhere.

Cant find the one I have but found this one, it was taken at the Wigan Wheelers event in Sep. 2006 when he broke the record.

Which club are you part of? My local 25 is the H25/17 and one of the local 10's is the H10/17R.

Brighton Mitre, but I live in Berkshire. Say hello if you see me racing next year - I'll be on a Koga Full Pro Track somewhere between 87" and 93" gear depending on the course and time of year.

I must have got confused about Wiggins - I thought I'd seen a pic of him on a British Cycling track bike with a front brake, but that may have been earlier.

Anyway, my point stands - there have been some stunning rides on fixed by the likes of Boardman, O'Bree etc, but that doesn't make fixed faster, it just means some of the best athletes have been so much better than the runners up that they could overcome the handicap of riding their track bikes

Commonwealth Games 2006 - NZer Peter Latham on a BT track bike...

http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos/2006/ ... C_8315.jpg

beaten by 2:44 over 40km, even Dangermouse put 15 seconds into him