Road fixed / fixed road

Caad is nice

This thread is gonna bankrupt me if I don't stop looking soon. That CAAD is the nuts

Both bikes are lovely.
The 10 speed di2 dhifter choice is smart.

Thanks

The stratos in his actual state

I might go for low profil rims soon

I’m sold on them.

First test ride on mynew to me tempo and loving it. Do wish the previous owner hadn't chopped the steerer down so much though.

What's people's go to brake levers? These hoods on the tektros on it are pretty grim feeling

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TRP rrl are nice levers.

Your current lever hoods are in my experience more comfortable than trp rrl. But obviously not as good looking.

To achieve the level of comfort you are looking for may I suggest looking at the setup of you bars/hoods instead.

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/375298/?offset=425#comment16531682

Do wish the previous owner hadn't chopped the steerer down so much though.

You are allowed to use an upward sloping stem 🙂

What's people's go to brake levers?

I like SRAM, as stated TRP RRL is the other common choice on here

Slightly shorter stem and upwards slope will be installed very soon. Haven't touched a thing yet after picking it up earlier today.

Thanks for the lever recommendations, will do some googling

How’s the riding fixed going? I’m in the over-40s club and finally got around to starting to learn recently. I’m getting on alright but am currently pretty sore after a (shortish) session trying to learn to skid a couple of days ago! Felt fine at the time and made some progress, but my left/leading leg is definitely hurting in a few spots. I assume it’s due to using muscles I’ve not used before (despite riding not-fixed for decades).

not really started yet as i've been a bit occupied with other stuff, aiming to switch over to commuting on the fixed bike next week (if the rain clears up - no mudguards!)

i did notice on the practice rides i've done that it is a lot harder to slow down using leg muscles than i thought it would be, and i'm in no way brave enough to attempt to DAS... grateful for front and rear brakes at the moment.

I commuted on fixed for years and always kept a front and rear brake and was mighty glad of them on several occasions. I have eventually gone back to a geared commuting bike, not sure if that is an age thing or not but I do prefer gears!

The one good thing I found with a year round fixed bike was the amount you could neglect the maintenance on it!

After many years riding fixed, I can do little skids to knock a bit of speed off fine (basically if you're clipped in just hop/unweight the back wheel a little and try to lock things up) but i've never got into those massive whippy things you see in the videos. However I have learnt skidding is heavily influenced by certain conditions: road surface, tyre size/pressure and gear ratio.

Skidding a hard skinny tyre in the wet on a slight downhill with an easy gear is a doddle. Skidding a softer 32c on heavy dry roads is very different. Big ratios are also much harder. Somewhere in the middle is what you're probably riding. For learning, try pumping your rear tyre up a bit more than you'd usually ride and find some smooth tarmac perhaps on a gentle downslope.

In terms of leg muscles, even after plenty of years of 25 mile a day fixed commutes, I would not have wanted to try brakeless - but this winter I did loads of lunge/squat exercises for ski fitness and it made a huge difference to my fixed riding. Suddenly significantly easier to control speed, particularly on descents. Just felt like I suddenly had a new set of muscles to help. Still never taking my brake off though!

Can I just be the boring person in the room and say that if you're in the over 40s club (like myself) then please look after your knees! Mine are a bit fucked for various reasons (mainly a broken leg a few years ago, but also from riding fixed / skidding / big gears / generally thinking I was invincible).

Trust me, it's way way better to stop using a front brake than to have bad knees.
This goes for anyone over 30, really.

look after your knees! Mine are a bit fucked...from riding fixed / skidding / big gears

^{[citation needed]}

The big gears bit definitely doesn't help your knees.

Again, citation needed. I've seen that asserted for more than 40 years personally, and nearly 80 years if you count the old blokes telling my teenaged dad that any gear over 84" meant certain knee death. I've never seen any proper evidence that using high gears causes knee injury.

I've never seen any proper evidence

I'm not taking a position on this currently.

However: have you seen any attempts to gather evidence?

have you seen any attempts to gather evidence?

I doubt whether any sane person would even try. Even if you could decide what "too high" meant (and it must vary between individuals) and gather reliable reports from a large enough population of what gears they had actually used over a relevantly long period, you'd still be left with an insurmountable array of confounding variables.

Plenty ride some pretty big ratios fixed and seem to be going just fine after many hundred thousand km's.

Obviously with not many sick skids going on though

yawnnnnnnn

Ineligible

Isn't this the bike of someone who did PBP fixed? Think she's an influencer now, but is (or at least was) legit

Isn't this the bike of someone who did PBP fixed?

Yep

https://carradice.co.uk/school-of-rocks-with-eleanor-jaskowska/