“The way of the singlespeed.”
“It’s more of a lifestyle definition than a way of riding.”

These are often the kinds of quotes you hear when folk who regularly ride these bikes start talking about singlespeeding, and it’s fair to say that it’s replaced the suspension/hardtail debate of the last few years as the hot topic in MTB circles.

If I’m honest, the whole thing had really passed me by. Being a confirmed user of gears, suspension, discs – in fact anything that I perceived would give my lack of skill the camouflage needed to get round my local trails – I really couldn’t imagine why you’d want to not give yourself all the help you could get. But a couple of niggles over the years conspired to change my views enough to at least start considering a more basic bike.

The first of these was, in fact, those very trails I was riding on. My local area is the Chilterns, considered by most MTB’ers to be the soft underbelly of our sport. When you ride there for any length of time, you realise that you make a kind of pact with the place. In summer it allows you hard-packed trails, bosky dells, soft lighting through the foliage and welcoming pubs. In winter it takes its payment in the form of your transmission. It’s not unusual for the mud in the Chilterns to destroy entire cassettes, for chains to give up under the strain, and cables to seize entirely, all in about 2 hours. Maintenance in the summer is a quick squirt with a dry lube and a wipe down with a damp rag, but in winter becomes a complete strip down and re-build after every ride, complete with a garden full of complimentary imported mud. Not only is it time consuming, its pay-check consuming too.

The second challenge to the status quo was me. I was, or so I thought, becoming not a bad rider. I could keep up with, be at the front with even, most of my companions on local rides. Trips away to Coed y Brenin, Betws y Coed and Glentress, had shown that I could complete the technical sections, sometimes even with flair. I could ride, rather than push to the tops of hills, and my downhill skills were, well, not embarrassing at least. But was it me? Or was it, in fact, the bike? Were all those technological advances doing all the work for me?

All these things came together in one of those rare moments that are enough to make one believe in fate. Looking idly through the classifieds one morning, I spied a frame for sale at the bargain price of £20.00: An offer no sane (if there is such a thing?) MTB’er could turn down. When the details were arranged and cash handed over, a casual remark by the seller suddenly bought all my musings sharply into focus.

“What are you going to do with the frame, then?”
“Oh, I dunno,” I replied “hack bike, probably.”
“It’s been a singlespeed for the last couple of years, why don’t you build it up like that?”

“Well, it’s funny you should say that…”

A plan was formed, internet and bike shop bargains hunted down, plastic flexed and, to cut a long story short, a couple of months later I was admiring my first One-Geared Bike.

Part of the ethos of singlespeed bikes seems to be cost, or in the words of the limbo song: “How low can you go?” Mine cost £400, and that was starting from a bare frame and including a Marzocchi Z2 front fork and Avid brakes. With a basic hardtail bike as a starter, it could be done for no, or minimum, expense. But to be honest, you know all that. The important thing is: What’s it like to ride? Are singlespeeds the knee-destroyers that everyone jokes about?

Well, the answer is that they ride just like a regular mountain bike, only you can’t change gear. I know that may sound over simplified, but that’s really all there is to it. Starting out on the only ride I’ve done so far, I noticed straight away that, on road at least, you give about 5-6 mph over your geared friends (unless, of course, you can turn your legs in a fairly decent impression of a washing machine at full spin). But once you hit the trails, most of the time you’re in the same gear that you always seem to end up in anyway.

And here’s a thing: You can wrap your entire hands round the grips. That may not sound like a huge difference, but trust me, it is. There’s nothing in the way, nothing to break the grip between you and the handlebars. The added leverage and strength that this alone gives you is sometimes enough to get you out of a sticky situation; the singlespeed equivalent of dropping down a couple of gears. And climbing? Well I’m the biggest fan of dropping down to 32t and spinning, but of course you don’t have that luxury, so you just get on with it. Remember what you did when you were younger? Yep, that’s right, you stood up. And guess what? ‘Cause you have to, you end up going up hills in a gear that your regular bike riding companions wouldn’t even consider. So far from being the last, you end up topping out way ahead with time to be smug (or at least regain enough breath to be able to speak).

And of course, the biggest riding advantage comes when you hit the mud and water. Riding the singlespeed you can say good-bye to annoying cassette skipping, wave good-riddance to chain suck. Hub-deep puddles that would have had you cringing can be ridden through with almost casual disregard. The undergrowth that grabs at, and entangles rear mechs, can be ignored, which opens up whole new sections and lines on your favourite downhill.

The next thing you notice is the weight. Or should I say the lack of it? Who’d have thought all that gear-changing paraphernalia could make such a difference to the weight? Well it does and it doesn’t. Sure, you’ve lost a pound, maybe a pound and a half, in selectors, cables and mechs, but the real gain is the loss of drag; especially when the going gets muddy. You’re not trying to churn the chain through a couple of mud-filled jockey wheels, or across the grinding gap of the front mech. All your effort goes to turn the rear wheel, directly propelling you forward. While your geared companions are searching desperately for a ratio that will match the terrain, your choice is simple: pedal fast, or pedal slow. And whilst we’re on the subject of weight gain, what about all that mud that normally collects around the BB shell and the chainstays just behind the chainset? Well not on a singlespeed it doesn’t. Nothing to build up around you see?

So then, is singlespeeding mountain bike Nirvana? Have I had a “Road to Damascus” conversation? Well no, not quite. There are a number of downsides. Firstly: Slippery, muddy and steep climbs. Here you will suffer. Simple really, having a reasonably large gear will just put too much torque through the rear wheel, and unless you have really grippy tyres you’ll just spin until you loose balance. That’s quite a hard one to overcome in the Chilterns, short, intense and muddy climbs being one of its defining characteristics.

Secondly, the limit on one’s speed is noticeable, especially when you point the nose down. For me, the downhill challenge is reacting quickly to the terrain, piling on the speed brings an almost drug-like distillation of the whole skill range of mountain biking. On a singlespeed, however, you’ll get used to admiring the scenery, ’cause the ride is more park swing than Alton Towers.

Thirdly, and this I’ll admit a bit sheepishly, it’s a good deal harder than I thought it was going to be: At this rate by the summer I’ll be ready for you, Mr Armstrong. And lastly, the end ride; you know, the bit where you want to get home, when normally you stick it in the big ring and just churn your way back, fighting off the cramps. With the singlespeed, that drag gets extended just that little bit longer and you reach terminal velocity just a little bit earlier (I still wasn’t last back to the car park though).

Is it something I’ll carry on with? Hell yeah! It takes you right back to the start of your MTB life. Remember? When it was all new and you had to work out how to get over this and climb that? Well singlespeeding is a lot like that. It’ll broaden your skill base and teach you more than you want to know about stamina. And the best bit of all is the knowledge that the bike is in the shed right now having not been cleaned, and not needing cleaning. Round where I ride that’s like getting stuff without having to pay for it, and that’s something I could get used to.