Talk about a niche within a niche

[velofinds]

Fixed gear bike specifically built for hill climbing? Now I've heard/seen everything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb6pLWmdbxA

[charliedid]

Like

[MattTuck]

I've heard of people doing this for hill climb races like Mt. Washington, where it is monotonic enough that they can dial in a gear size that will work up the whole thing.

Eliminate brakes, or just a front brake. ultra light everything else.

[JAllen]

Interesting stuff. Thank you for sharing. I'm curious what his gearing was. I don't think they mentioned it.

[ultraman6970]

You can climb anything with a fix gear, the problem is to get the gearing right the 1st time and be strong enough. You cant pretend just buy a fix gear with 32x30 for example just because they say is lighter and better and w/o trained a single mile and try to win mount diablo. What they say is super interesting but as with all the things, w/o training you can have a bike made of air and it will be hard to go uphill.

Besides is not like a super new concept, saw this stuff like 40 years ago, works, but the guys that were doing it were trained or fitted really well.

[ColonelJLloyd]

Cool bike, thanks for sharing.

You can climb anything with a fix gear, the problem is to get the gearing right the 1st time and be strong enough. You cant pretend just buy a fix gear with 32x30 for example just because they say is lighter and better and w/o trained a single mile and try to win mount diablo. What they say is super interesting but as with all the things, w/o training you can have a bike made of air and it will be hard to go uphill.

Besides is not like a super new concept, saw this stuff like 40 years ago, works, but the guys that were doing it were trained or fitted really well.

I guess I missed the part where they said his training strategy was to sit on the couch until race day, have these guys build him a bike without his input and then ride it without much effort to the top of the hill.

[Mark McM]

I've heard of people doing this for hill climb races like Mt. Washington, where it is monotonic enough that they can dial in a gear size that will work up the whole thing.

I know several people who ride Mt. Washington with fixed gears. As you say, it is monotonic enough to work. (In addition, several people ride up Mt. Washington on unicycles each year, which is an extreme form of fixed gear cycling.)

Mt. Washington is a mountain, not a hill. The bike in the video is intended for much shorter hill climb efforts, for which a fixed gear bike may be even better suited

But as a custom optimized bike for hill climbs, I'm not that impressed with this bike. The video mentions that the bike is 5.1 Kg (11.25 lb). The bike I use for Mt. Washington weighs just around 13 lb., and it has a multi-gear derailleur drive train, dropped handlebars, and two fully functioning brakes. If I were to eliminate the brakes, shifters and derailleur, replace the cassette and freehub with a fixed gear hub and sprocket, and replace the drop bar with a cowhorn bar, I'm sure that I could get it under 11 lb.