A Love Letter to Tracklocross <3
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past five years, you’ve probably heard about tracklocross. Taking your fixed gear into the woods to shred that forest harder than your last university essay.
In the past few years tracklocross has been evolving, blessing our culture with new frames, new parts and new trends. It also became the total number one reason to get another bike, and I can’t complain about a good excuse like that. So today I wanted to share my love for the yet uninitiated reading this, and dive a bit more into the details of tracklocross and why you need to try it.
Building a Tracklo bike is cool!
Putting the N+1 reason aside, building a tracklocross bike is one of the best things about all this. If you have a good knowledge about fixed gear parts, it’s a good opportunity to extend it and explore some unknown horizons. You’ll get so much satisfaction to search and work with the standards you know, but also to discover a whole new world of parts. MTB and gravel tires, BMX cranks, frames with bigger clearance and even some oddities that you might have never encountered before like eccentric bottom brackets or weird hub spacing.
PS: If you need help for a starter build, we made an entire episode that you can find here —> Episode 56
Riding in a completely new spectrum of terrain can only end one way; You're crashing because you’re having too much fun, and you let your guard down. But you’re also massively improving your bike control. Riding new areas is the best way to improve your skills and how you ride your bike in general. Tracklocross abllities carry over well to urban riding, such as when you have to bunny-hop the next curb you see because you had to jump over those tree stumps last time. Or in totally subconscious ways by gaining better bike handling the next time you go over a bunch of wet dead leaves.
So you’re going to learn new skills and all, great! But you know what’s even better? TRACKLOCROSS WORKS EVERYWHERE!
How many times have you gone on a weekend trip with your family or partner and thought that taking a track bike along didn’t sound like the best option. Well, this time you don’t have to worry because you can take your tracklo bike onto absolutely any kind of terrain.
Trip to the beach and your partner sunbathing, so you’re bored? Tracklocross!
Ski vacations, but the snow wasn’t that good this year? Tracklocross!
Few days in a mountain retreat but you need some adrenaline in your body?
TRACKLOCROSS!
Jokes aside, it might lead you to some of your best rides. It did for me.
Numerous events and races also spawned from tracklocross. It can be your local shop organizing something, or it could be the Tracklo-wolds of 2040 with 250 riders at the starting line and a bunch of sponsors. But after all, being out of the city makes organizing events easier, races more interesting, and usually brings a wider audience.
It’s also a new plain field where people can finally have a chance at having fun against strong opponents. C’mon! Don’t tell me you’ve never tried to beat your local “Patrick”, 20 years of courier service under his belt, local legend on Strava and showing off his “ride fast die last” sticker on his top tube.
Now you might have a chance of winning because “Patrick” is just too old for mud!
Finally, after all this action, you might want to relax a bit, calm the nerves, have a nice talk around a fire and eat that canned tuna you’ve been dreaming about all day.
Tracklocross and camping go well together! Explore new places, pitch your tent for the night, and continue the next day. It’s a match made in heaven for people who like to mix stupid fun day time and philosophical talk under the starry sky.
So what do you think? Tracklo sounds pretty amazing now that you think about it, huh! So get rid of these 25c tires and let’s go enjoy some jungle action!
Explore, adapt, overco… crash over a root that was there for no reason…
🎞: Fujicolor 100/400 ISO
📷: Nikon F100 / Konica Recorder
