Rubbish at descending - advice please?

wulfhound

Hi everyone,

Have recently gotten in to road riding with a club, we ride a fairly hilly 30 miler. I've been commuting for some years and have an ok level of overall fitness - I live at the top of a big hill & even in fairly quick groups I'm able to hold my own on climbs. However, I find everyone just zips past at 30+mph on the downhills - anything more than a 1 in 20 and I'm on the brakes most of way - am just not comfortable with being in a group of riders at that speed, feel like my reaction time & stopping distance are too long for what I'm used to considering (as bike commuter on London roads & occasional tin box driver) as an acceptable safety margin.

Admittedly they're not riding anything like as tight as the pro's, but those are people that have signed up to accept a much higher risk of injury.. I'm dad to a young kid & another on the way, so my idea of 'acceptable' risk atm is going to be lower than many. Thing is, though, I'm hoping to take part in sportives & inter-club stuff, and am concerned that where bigger groups of riders are involved & dropping to the back isn't an option, being slow down hills is potentially /more/ dangerous (to self and others) than conquering fear / improving technique to the point where I'm happy to ride at the same pace as others down hills.

So just looking for advice really.. how to get down those hills a) safely, b) quickly.. or at least not embarassingly slowly.

Thanks all,
- WH.

Anonymous

Watch this video and copy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxXqQqAc ... re=related

rick_chasey

Don't brake as much.

If you're on the brakes the whole way down on a long climb, it's probably worse anyway.

Anonymous

Actually. descending in a group that you are trying to stay with helped get me over my fear of descending following my wipeout at 44mph.

furrag

I was crapping myself at 25mph in April, but am now hitting 40mph+ each hill ride.

I realised I wasn't scared so much of the speed itself, but the cornering at speed. Here's the advice I got and now use which has helped:

- Keep your eyes on the line into the corner. Your bike will follow.
- Don't brake in the corners. Scrub the speed off before turning.
- Outside foot down, weight on it, and lean into the corner.
- Descend on the drops. You'll get more leverage on the brakes, so feel more confident if you can stop quickly if need be.
- Fingers off the brakes and on the drops - if you hit a pot hole, you'll end up pulling on the anchors.

+1 too for following people on descents I don't know, or when trying to go faster down the hills. I tend to give about 5-10 metres distance, follow their lines, and follow their braking using distance as a guide.

Do you get into an aero position too? It'll add speed to your descent. I tend to shift my weight back a bit, and keep the pedals in a horizontal position at quarter-past-nine (or is that quarter-to-three?) position, with my weight on them.

acebobby

The decent is your reward for all the hard work climbing you have done, get into a big gear and cycle as fast as you can! I have never riden in a group but I would think to avoid target fixation the best option would be to not look at the rider in front but to look past them!

Bobby

sungod

dragging the brakes will wear your pads and rims, if the rim gets really hot you might even have the tube fail

best is to brake *hard* and late, you need your weight well back for this

loads of good advice here...

http://www.flammerouge.je/content/3_fac ... escend.htm

crankycrank

Always look at where you want to go rather than where you want to avoid. When entering turns look as far forward as possible towards the exit of the turn. You also want to keep scanning the road surface a bit to avoid holes, rocks and such on the road but mainly focus on the exit. A little unnerving at first but it helps tremendously at carving a smooth, confident line through corners. Good practice is to find a turn and pick out a specific spot on the road at the exit, keep your main focus on that spot, (remembering to scan the road surface directly ahead of you as well) and try to ride directly over that spot. This also works really well when overcooking a turn. Don't focus on where you think you're going to end up and crash. Again, remember to turn your head and look ahead through the turn where you want to go and you'll be amazed at how easy it is to correct your line and feel safe doing it as well. Another thing to practice is when coming up on a moving object such as a ball or debris blowing across the road, focus on the path you want to ride to avoid the debris rather than staring at it and trying not to hit it. Practice, practice, practice and it will eventually become automatic.

wulfhound

Thanks for all the advice so far, that article is v helpful sungod! Think that commuting on puncture-proof but lockup-prone Hardcase tires maybe hasn't done me any favours, in terms of how I expect the bike to handle downhill.. I can probably throw my racer further in to corners & lean over much more than I currently do, don't massively want to find its limits the hard way at 40mph though, esp with a bunch of other bikes behind.

I figure that, from the point of view of group riding, a lot of the safety margin comes from everyone basically following the same course of action wrt braking, so I'm still going to hang off the back for the next cpl of rides to have a bit of a safety margin but try & keep my speed up as far as poss.

Discowheels

Its all about having the "bottle". I think we all lose it at some time - i know i did when i came off at about 20mph - but after learning to push it in the right places

dmch2

It was very windy and blustery around here last night and I only felt safe descending at about 25mph. (A later patch was less windy and I got over 30). On my old hybrid I was happy at 40mph.

Was it just particularly windy or are road bikes more susceptible to cross winds? Or do I just need to get used to a bike that's more responsive?

Peddle Up!

NapoleonD wrote:

Watch this video and copy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxXqQqAc ... re=related

Beautiful, almost balletic. I only wish I could.

Cubic

Peddle Up! wrote:

NapoleonD wrote:

Watch this video and copy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxXqQqAc ... re=related

Beautiful, almost balletic. I only wish I could.

Try this one too, it's one of my favourites!:

http://vimeo.com/8939902

ride_whenever

get/borrow a mountain bike and do abit off-road... you soon learn bike handling.

the other thing to do is find a fairly flat corner and see how fast you can take it. Once you're comfortable cranked right over on the flat, descending loses a lot of its fear as you're much more comfortable at the limit of grip.

Do you have an issue descending on your own?

wulfhound

Thanks for the tips so far.. those videos are sheer poetry :shock:

What I've learned so far..

* years of commuting amongst tin-boxes that will go full-retard at a moment's notice has conditioned me in to thinking that "be able to stop at a moment's notice" is the only escape route. In ride/sportive conditions that's not necessarily the case, need to adjust my thinking.

* practice cornering on flat roads & solo descents. Tick. Good excuse to practice climbs too 8)

* thumbs-over-fingers on the drops is a great way to fool the brain/body, allows for planned braking where it's needed, instead of reflex over-reaction where it isn't.

* relax / get rid of tension => better balance.. makes perfect sense, this one's going to be tricky tho, am 'naturally highly strung' (according to my mum anyhow) and a total caffeine-fiend to boot. Probably need to take up meditation, yoga or summat. Which I've no objection to in principle, just need more hours in the day.. new thread "how to survive on 5.5 hours sleep per night"

* looking at where I want to go.. great advice, thanks - does make things a bit easier somehow, what my mind ends up seeing is a clear path rather than all the crap across the other 75% of the road surface.

Am having a bit of difficulty getting my weight as far back as I'd like.. not quite sure why as my saddle is already set back. If I push back with my arms, I'm still transferring weight to the front of the bike.. what's the trick here? My saddle's fairly high relative to the bars as the frame is smallish for my height, possibly need to fit an angled front stem to bring the bars up a cm or two?

One other question tho.. a lot of this advice seems to make most sense in the context of long, relatively-shallow, twisty descents on good roads. Any additional advice for short but steep-as-hell North Downs type hills with their typically cruddy road surfaces?

rick_chasey

For the answer to your weight question, (which will help on the steeper tricker decents), you should lift your arse off the saddle a fraction and lean back that way.

jame58rown

NapoleonD wrote:

Watch this video and copy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxXqQqAc ... re=related

Nah, he's rubbish...... THIS is how you descend a mountain:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7pYqz0eXDM lol

Seriously though, I believe it's just a question of confidence.
I was descending (not that fast as the descent had just started) and swerved to avoid a pothole, which took me into the path of the dreaded roadside gutter :shock:.

Anyway as I fell, I put my hand out (instinct and all that) however my middle finger landed in an awkward position and there was a loud, sickening crack.... my middle finger still looks weird today and this was months ago (when I first started riding) I was quite timid for a while after, but my confidence has grown again and now I descend at 40+ mph.

Just relax on descents and before you know it you'll be wishing you could go faster .

Peddle Up!

dmch2 wrote:

It was very windy and blustery around here last night and I only felt safe descending at about 25mph. (A later patch was less windy and I got over 30). On my old hybrid I was happy at 40mph.

Was it just particularly windy or are road bikes more susceptible to cross winds? Or do I just need to get used to a bike that's more responsive?

That still spooks me too. On my hybrid there is a definite stabilising effect from the heavier wheels (think large gyroscopes). Oddly, watching the pro's descend, the lines their bikes take seem absolutely smooth and clean - is this down to an excellent sense of balance? I always get a "twitch" on my road bike which can make me reach from the brakes.

sparkins1972

The two best pieces of advice I got were

1) Keep pedaling
2) Look further ahead - i.e. don't just focus a few feet ahead but several metres - somehow speed feels less this way and my confidence grew without realising it

37monkey

Thanks for posting the video NapD, you know what my searching skills are like - but now I can show my brother rather than trying to describe it to him. btw is the rumour true that one of the bikes he passed was being ridden by Valatino Rossi?

dmch2

sparkins1972 wrote:

The two best pieces of advice I got were

1) Keep pedaling
2) Look further ahead - i.e. don't just focus a few feet ahead but several metres - somehow speed feels less this way and my confidence grew without realising it

It was pretty dark when I was descending on the new bike so I was probably not looking very far ahead, so got scared, tensed up etc. Will try again on a sunny day!

El Diego

I was descending at about 40mph recently and the front wheel began wobbling like crazy. There was some cross winds and my wheels have quite wide bladed spokes, would this have been the cause? I instinctively pulled on the breaks, which seemed to make it worse. I'll be honest - I crapped myself. Any ways to prevent this or stop the wobble once it begins?

rick_chasey

El Diego wrote:

I was descending at about 40mph recently and the front wheel began wobbling like crazy. There was some cross winds and my wheels have quite wide bladed spokes, would this have been the cause? I instinctively pulled on the breaks, which seemed to make it worse. I'll be honest - I crapped myself. Any ways to prevent this or stop the wobble once it begins?

S'a common occurance > http://www.bikeradar.com/fitness/articl ... bble-14776

Peddle Up!

El Diego wrote:

I was descending at about 40mph recently and the front wheel began wobbling like crazy. There was some cross winds and my wheels have quite wide bladed spokes, would this have been the cause? I instinctively pulled on the breaks, which seemed to make it worse. I'll be honest - I crapped myself. Any ways to prevent this or stop the wobble once it begins?

Join the club! :?

http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtop ... highlight=

dmch2

Descending is fine without the cross wind. I hit 40mph into a 10 mph headwind today and it was MORE stable than my hybrid felt.

Looking ahead, keeping relaxed and not staring at the speedo (it has a max function to look at afterwards) all help.

masterchef

thx for the advice for everyone who has posted, i went out yesterday on a hilly 50miler instead of doing my normal 75m flat ride and i tried these tecniques down the hills, i went down them on the drops all the way they helped me alot i usually go down on the tops and holding the brakes loosly lol:)

wulfhound

Yep, been trying a lot of this out on shallow descents and it's working good. I'd previously been letting the bars carry too much of my weight - shifting back and putting no more pressure on the bars than is needed to steer helps a lot.

Still having difficulty with steeper hills though.. if I'm on the drops, can't seem to get my weight back far enough no matter what I do (combination of hill angle & (saddle -> bar) angle means the bars end up taking a bunch of my weight on steeper hills). If I'm on the hoods, can't get enough leverage on the brakes to deal with steep slopes (as expected).

So do I...

* fit an angled front stem to bring the bars up a bit higher - my saddle is pretty high as I'm on the largish side for the frame?

* do some core exercises so I can shift more of my weight to be supported by my lower body even when at strange angles?

* replace my balls with extra-large steel ones thereby putting extra weight on the back of the bike & canceling the (not entirely irrational) fear of 35mph+ wipeouts?

rick_chasey

The latter.

But your position on the bike may not be helping.

But seriously, if you want to be good at downhills, you need to not be scared. Otherwise, if it's still horrible for you, since it's a hobby and not your job, sod trying to be good at descending!

wulfhound

Yep, I get that fear is part of the problem - but all the advice so far has been, weight on the back wheel to keep the bike stable - and on steeper hills, I can't seem to get my weight back.. don't suppose downhills are ever going to be my forte, but it's the area right now where I can't hold my own wrt the group I ride with, and that's something I'd like to remedy.

boneyjoe

Try doing that long twisty downhill, from the lights by the Shell garage down to the Mansion house pub without touching the brakes. Find its a good test of DH nerve, as there are often some tricky crosswinds there too. Can't help bottling it at times though!

wulfhound

Sorry, I've no idea where you're talking about...