Single life

Among many other things, life is a series of compromises. Furthermore life is a learning experience packed with opportunities to experiment, should they be spotted. Like most choices we make about how to live our lives, single life has advantages and disadvantages.
And so (this may seem like a departure in direction) but whilst I am house sitting for some friends for three weeks, I am in the position of having a cycle ride to and from work. I could drive since I have been left with a rather nice car, complete with keys and insurance. That’s no fun though is it? Much better to get on my bike and slog through the freezing rain. I know how to enjoy myself . . . .
Anyway, returning to the original point of life, the universe and singledom, I decided that this morning was a good time to find out what the world of single speed biking is about. I keep seeing single speed bikes, like the Charge Plug, which look beautiful in their simplicity and the world of single speeding is oft talked about in the mountain biking world.
My current route to work includes a few hills, in particular one which is pretty long and one which is short, sharp and steep. Given my general lack of fitness, as recently demonstrated on a trip to the 7 Stanes in Scotland, I decided to pick a gear just below middle on the rear cassette and bunged the chain on the middle ring at the front. With standard mountain bike gearing, I reckoned that should be fine.
Well, the uphills were ok. Not fast, not that they ever are, and out of the saddle for most of the way up, but not too much of a problem. I probably could have gone up a gear at the back, putting me exactly mid range of my mountain bike gearing – the recommended norm for single speeding. However, the flats and downhills were not great, running out of pedal power way before a decent speed is achieved. On longer, steeper downhills, it’s not such a problem as gravity will eventually get you there. The flats and shorter or less steep downward slopes are plain annoying though.
So my trip into work involved more toil than usual on the uphills and greatly reduced speed on the downhills. Single speeding? Not convinced. Might try knocking it up a gear or two and see whether that improves things, or whether is just makes my legs collapse.