Fixed Gear Riding with FYXO aka Andy White

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We’ve finally got him on the pod – a spot that in his own words, he was born ready for, and I couldn’t be more excited to chat with my friend FYXO (aka Andy White), to take a deep dive into the fixie world. It morphs nicely into the trajectory that Life in the Peloton has taken this year, where I’ve been talking a lot about uncovering all the different pelotons out there, and this is one of the most niche pelotons of them all.

Andy and I go way back to our days racing the club scene in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, where he used to race on an old vintage steel bike. He spent time as a bike courier in London, where he worked during the ‘heyday’ of the profession – where businesses would courier documents around the city in the same way we now send an email. It was a bit of an unexpectedly cool, cult profession at the time, that came with a bit of street cred. It was also from within the world of bike couriers that alley cat racing kicked off – which is an underground subculture of unstructured night races around the city, usually starting from the pub after a few pints.

He has dabbled in all aspects of fixie riding since settling back in Melbourne, most notably setting up his brand FYXO, which was all about bringing fixed gear bikes into the country during the boom in fixie riding that happened a few years back and documenting his adventures around the world riding alley cat races. It’s fascinating to hear about how Andy became immersed in this world and raced the alley cats in the cities of London and New York, before eventually bringing alley cat racing Down Under, and typically in his own unique way - in a style that he calls alley cats for the masses. The largest of these is the Melburn - Roobaix, which is now in its 16th year and has become synonymous with fixed-gear riding in Melbourne. It combines many of the different subcultures of cycling and the result is a fun, epic day of cycling, and something that I love being part of.

I hope you enjoy listening and learning more about the intriguing world of fixie riding!

Cheers,

Mitch