Forum Overview :: Rants :: Why does fixed gear make you faster/stronger than just using higest gear only?

[quote name="Fussbett"]That's a serious question. Anyway, biking sucks for exercise I have discovered. I rehabilitated my high school bike and it went from rusty and shitty after 20 years of lying on the damp garage floor, to... Rideable, and pretty cool looking, actually, in a beat up and turquoise way. The goal was to have an option to switch up from running, which I'm getting sick of, especially at my new place which has no good routes that don't involved car exhaust. The downside, I discovered, is that I have to go a million miles and a million miles an hour to get close to the burn of running. I've taken to only using the highest gear and sprinting as often as possible, and it's a huge effort to get tired. So, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I'm declaring cyclists to be huge fags. This is old news and I've long declared them terrible people, starting with messengers, but now the weight of science backs up my claim. I visited a bike store to buy a new chain which was a huge mistake. I opened the door and heard the end of this conversation between employees: "*SIGH* I don't want to get matching ones because every Toronto rider is doing that now..." Five seconds back into biking and I'm already furious about WHATEVER he's discussing. Worse, always worse, are still the rollerbladers in their Fruit Boots. There's one section of the bike path along the lake that gets thin, and sometimes you get stuck behind a clump of rollerbladers, not in single file because they're chatting away. I call this a "traffag jam".[/quote]