LFGSS
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
Seeing first light at around Framsden was a moment I won’t forget. Unfortunately that was last year and on a road bike with gears. This year the weather forecast and family put me off, so I set off at 10:30 and rode a route of roughly the same distance (I’ve driven it to check) from East Finchley via Hertford, Bishop’s Stortford, Thaxted and joining the DD course at Castle Headingham before stopping at our house in Peasenhall at 6 pm.
I had a bright sunny day (got through a litre of Go Electrolyte and nearly 2 litres of water) and spent 30 mins off the bike fixing a broken seat mounted bottle cage and buying drinks. In all - really happy with the time (using tri-bars on my track bike and pushing a 90” gear (15t x 50t) – which hurt a lot between Potters Bar and Newgate Street and at castle Headingham.
I did really miss the atmosphere though, so I wandered down to the junction of Bruisyard Road and the A1120 in Peasenhall at around 7:30 on Sunday and saw a bunch of guys on fixed wheels all looking like they had suffered. I asked one if it had been a wet night and he gave me a “You can’t possibly know what we’ve just been through...” look, which I guess is true.
I’ll do it next year though.
Top tip - I did the route in reverse on a 76” geared fixed wheel last August when coming to London for a stag do. The bike had a heavy Columbus tubing frame and if anything, seemed harder work. Consequently I got severe cramp in the glutes from the relentless peddling but managed to sort it by rubbing on a tube of Ibrobufen gel just south of the Rodings.