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| My 2013 Salsa El Mariachi as a rigid single speed bike. |
Single speed mountain biking? Are you mad? Well you have to be at some level. Most people tend to think that you're mental (or a dumbass) if you decide to go run a single speed bike as you're just making it harder for yourself, and in a way they're right, but you should go try it anyway. Why? Well...
YOU'RE AN 'ARD BOY
You want to show all those sissies running gears that you're tougher, stronger, and better than them so you willingly put yourself at a disadvantage and show them how you're superior by beating them on climbs and generally just lasting longer, or as long as them. Soon enough their wives will be wishing they married you instead.
Noooope. Unless you are one of the few biking gods who has mastered both his body and his bike, you won't be creaming any geared riders any time soon, and by riders I mean people at the same level of fitness as you. Sure you can smoke riders who aren't as fit as you, big whoop. That's like being proud of beating a 5 year old in a fight to the death.
Truth is, you're just putting yourself at an unreasonable disadvantage on flats and downhills, and you're not actually harder. You will do better at climbs though because you don't think of anything else but pedaling. This is one of the reasons I converted my old geared bike to SS. I noticed that on uphills I wasn't really having any fun as I'm a dumbass who doesn't know how to shift so on this one particularly steep area I spent more time switching gears than just pedaling. That totally killed the fun for me as it had become a game of finding the perfect gear.
After switching, things became easy (probably in my head) as I just had to focus on pedaling. So in a way, it kinda makes climbs easier. Which makes you (well, me) a wussy in reality.
IT MAKES YOU STRONGER
Having a single gear that takes you everywhere means you're training every time you are on your bike. If you want to go faster, get a single speed bike to train.
Not really. I mean, yeah you do get stronger but you'd get much better gains riding a geared bike. On a geared bike you can make a moderately steep hill difficult to get up by switching to a harder gear. To do that on a single speed bike you need to go find an actual steep hill to climb up, and down, and up, and down, and up, and down, and up, and down again. Anything you can do on a single speed bike, you can do on a geared bike much better and more efficiently.
YOU THINK IT'S FUN (so yeah I had to delete the 2 other entries because I realized they were pretty lame after 3 years of Singles Speeding so jumping to the end huzzah)
You enjoy pain, you think getting your ass kicked is great, pushing your bike up a very steep hill is one of your favorite past times, you like the simplicity of it all, this is not a proper sentence.
Yep. This is literally the only reason you should get a single speed bike. Entry title is misleading by the way, I only did that to appear contentious for drama. Even if no one actually reads this blog. I did say I had mental issues right?
Don't get a single speed bike unless it's what tickles your fancy. Try it out for a couple of weeks. If you think it's fun, go get a single speed bike. Don't be all pretentious or elitist about it. The reason you go SS is because you just don't give a shit, you just want to have fun.
SS bikes are simple, elegant, and fun. There's the feeling of being a kid again on your first ever bike on a ride with your friends. Granted you'll be getting off and pushing on rides that just keep going uphill but hey that's part of the fun right?
That said I'm totally a pussy who switched the El Mar to a 1x10. I wanted to see how it'd go up in the mountains since my 1x10 experience has been limited to my road bike, and I plan on getting a Heckler early next year and switching it to 1x10. I will switch back to SS once I get the Heckler and maybe do 36/16 since I've grown out of 32/18.
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| PUSSAAAAAAY~! |
