This mountain bike is better than this bike at almost everything.
It has suspension, powerful brakes, a wide range of gears and tyres specifically designed to maintain grip on rough terrain.
This bike has one gear, no suspension and a drivetrain that refuses to let me stop pedalling.
If I wanted to ride as quickly, safely and comfortably as possible through these woods, choosing the fixed gear would make very little sense.
And yet, when the terrain becomes rough, this apparently worse bicycle can make me feel more focused, more involved and sometimes even more in control.
So why does the worse bike feel better?
Calling it worse is not an attempt at humility.
The mountain bike has more grip. It can absorb larger impacts. Its brakes allow speed to be reduced without requiring the rider to resist the rotation of the drivetrain. Its gears let the relationship between the body and the rear wheel change as the terrain changes.
If capability means the range of conditions a bicycle can manage, the mountain bike wins.
It is barely a competition.
The mountain bike can travel faster over rough ground, maintain traction more easily and offer a much larger margin for error. It can smooth out impacts that the fixed gear sends directly through the rider. It allows the rider to sit and spin on steep climbs, coast on descents and brake with relatively little effort.
The tracklocross bike offers none of this.
Its limitations are not hidden. They announce themselves almost immediately.
The first steep climb creates a problem.
On a geared bicycle, I can respond to the gradient by changing the mechanical relationship between my legs and the rear wheel. I can move into an easier gear, increase my cadence and reduce the force required through each pedal stroke.
On this bike, that relationship is fixed.
The gear does not negotiate.
I can stand up. I can shift my weight. I can alter my line. I can pull against the handlebars and try to keep the rear tyre connected to the ground.
I can push harder, or I can stop.
But I cannot ask the bicycle for a different gear.
The bike simplifies the problem, but it does not make the problem easy.
We usually treat every added capability as an added freedom.
Another gear means another possible response. Suspension offers another way of managing the terrain. A dropper post creates another riding position. A cycling computer offers speed, distance, heart rate, navigation, training load and perhaps a small electronic judgement about why today’s ride is less impressive than the one you completed three weeks ago.
Each of these things can be useful.
But each one also becomes part of the rider’s field of attention.
The more the bicycle can do, the more the rider may have to decide.
Which gear should I be in?
Should the suspension be firmer?
Should I lower the saddle?
Should I brake now?
Should I carry more speed?
Am I riding efficiently?
Am I riding quickly enough?
A capable bike gives answers to more situations, but it can also produce more questions.
The fixed gear answers many of those questions before the ride begins.
There is one gear.
The saddle stays where it is.
The drivetrain remains connected to the movement of the rear wheel.
The available responses become fewer, but the remaining responses become more important.
This does not mean that removing options automatically creates control.
If I removed the steering wheel from a car, I would also have fewer decisions. The journey would become much simpler, although probably quite brief.
A limitation is not useful simply because it is a limitation.
So what separates a useful constraint from mere inadequacy?
We often imagine perception as a sequence.
The eyes observe the trail. The brain processes what it sees. The rider then chooses an action.
But riding does not feel like three separate events.
You understand the terrain by moving through it.
The trail arrives as pressure through the pedals, vibration through the handlebars and small changes in the direction of the wheels. The bicycle moves, the body responds and the terrain reveals itself through that movement.
A rut is not simply a depression in the ground. It appears as something the tyre may follow.
A bank is not merely a raised piece of earth. It appears as something that may support a turn.
A loose stone becomes something to avoid, absorb or use.
The landscape is not only a collection of objects.
It is a collection of possible actions.
On a fixed gear, this relationship becomes unusually difficult to ignore.
When the rear wheel turns, the cranks turn.
When the terrain changes the speed of the wheel, it also changes the movement of the rider’s legs.
If the rear wheel accelerates down a slope, the pedals accelerate with it.
If the tyre loses traction, the change travels through the chain and into the body.
The ground does not remain beneath the bicycle.
It passes through it.
The trail becomes legible through resistance, rhythm and pressure.
This is part of what makes the bike feel so involving. It reduces the mechanical distance between the terrain and the rider.
A mountain bike can absorb the landscape.
The tracklocross bike translates it.
Every root, rut and loose corner becomes part of an ongoing exchange between the body, the drivetrain and the ground.
That does not mean the fixed gear offers more objective control.
It does not.
The mountain bike provides more braking force, more traction and more ways of responding to changing conditions. It expands the range of terrain the rider can manage safely.
But mechanical control and attentional involvement are not the same thing.
The mountain bike can protect the rider from parts of the trail.
The tracklocross bike makes those parts harder to ignore.
It can feel controlled because almost nothing separates action from consequence.
Push too hard and the rear tyre slips.
Carry too much speed and the pedals begin to drive the legs.
Choose the wrong line and the rigid fork reports the error immediately.
The feedback is direct, physical and difficult to misinterpret.
The bike may be less capable, but the relationship between what I do and what happens next becomes clearer.
There is a seductive story we could tell here.
Simple bike good. Complicated bike bad. Steel pure. Electronics corrupt. Beard increasingly ginger.
But that story collapses quickly.
The fixed gear is not a return to some untouched natural form of cycling. It is also a piece of technology. Its simplicity is designed, selected and maintained.
Nor is difficulty automatically meaningful.
A badly fitted saddle is difficult.
A snapped chain is difficult.
Getting lost without food in sideways Scottish rain is difficult.
None of these things becomes profound merely because it is unpleasant.
The important question is not whether the bicycle creates difficulty.
It is whether the difficulty produces useful information.
A useful constraint clarifies the relationship between action and consequence.
It narrows attention without eliminating meaningful choice.
It invites adaptation.
It gives the rider enough resistance to create a problem, but enough freedom to discover a response.
A bad constraint does the opposite.
It overwhelms the rider, hides cause and effect or creates danger without offering any meaningful way to respond.
Sometimes the fixed gear asks me to adapt.
Sometimes it simply tells me to get off and walk.
Knowing the difference is part of the ride.
This brings us to a larger question.
We often define freedom by the number of options available to us.
More routes.
More settings.
More information.
More possible ways to act.
More possible versions of ourselves.
But an unlimited field of possibility can become strangely paralysing.
Every choice remains surrounded by the choices not taken.
Every decision can be revised.
Every direction can be abandoned.
The possibility of doing anything can make it difficult to do something.
The fixed gear removes possibilities.
Once the trail rises, I cannot choose an easier ratio.
Once the bicycle is moving, I cannot completely withdraw my legs from its movement.
Once I enter a rough section, I must respond from inside the relationship between the body, the machine and the ground.
The bike turns intention into commitment.
The gradient is already there.
The traction is already limited.
The gear ratio has already been chosen.
The speed of the bicycle is already carrying me into the next moment.
These conditions limit what I can do, but they do not remove responsibility.
I still have to choose how to respond.
I can shift my weight.
I can resist the pedals.
I can commit to the line.
I can abandon the attempt.
Freedom does not appear outside the limitations of the ride.
It appears through them.
Perhaps freedom is not only the ability to keep every possibility open.
Perhaps it is also the ability to inhabit one decision fully.
This may also explain why a demanding ride can feel restful.
Much of ordinary life is difficult in ways that are difficult to locate.
Emails, expectations, messages, tone, timing, money, work, relationships, admin, passwords and the uncalled-for violence of calendar invitations.
A notification appears that simply says, “Can we chat?”
The problem has no visible shape, but the nervous system reacts to it anyway.
These are problems without edges.
They overlap with one another.
They require interpretation.
They remain unfinished.
They often demand that we guess hidden rules while pretending everyone else received the manual.
The trail is also difficult, but its difficulty is precise.
The tyre begins to lose grip.
The gradient increases.
A rut pulls the front wheel away from the intended line.
A pedal approaches a rock.
The bicycle carries too much speed into a corner.
The problem is here.
The feedback is immediate.
The response belongs to the body.
Nothing needs to be translated through a meeting invitation marked “urgent”.
The ride does not remove difficulty.
It exchanges vague difficulty for precise difficulty.
That precision can create focus.
Attention contracts around the immediate relationship between pressure, movement and terrain.
The next problem is visible.
It can be touched.
It can be attempted.
It can be failed.
It can be tried again.
The fixed gear gives the nervous system a problem with edges.
There is no guarantee that this will feel calming for everyone. For some riders, the lack of brakes, gears or suspension may create anxiety rather than focus.
But for me, the limitations of the bicycle can make the world temporarily easier to read.
The ride becomes demanding without becoming ambiguous.
The bicycle does not ask what I meant by my last message.
The trail does not conceal its expectations.
The drivetrain does not schedule a follow-up meeting.
It simply turns.
Push down, pull up, repeat.
So why does the worse bike feel better?
Not because it secretly offers more control.
It does not.
The mountain bike is still more capable. It can carry more speed, handle rougher terrain and provide a greater margin for error.
The fixed gear feels better because it makes control easier to perceive.
Its limits reduce the distance between action, feedback and consequence.
It removes decisions that can be made in advance and intensifies the decisions that remain.
It makes the rider less protected from the terrain, but more involved in negotiating it.
The mountain bike expands what the bicycle can do.
The tracklocross bike intensifies my awareness of what I am doing.
One offers capability.
The other offers involvement.
Neither is inherently superior.
They create different relationships between rider, machine and landscape.
The better bike can take me across rougher terrain, at greater speed, with more comfort and a larger margin for error.
But the worse bike asks more clearly where I am, what the ground is doing and what I intend to do next.
Perhaps that is why it feels so good.
It cannot do everything for me.
So I have to be there.
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