I love descending, especially twisty roads I haven't done before. Palomar is fun - 30 minutes or so, lots of hairpins, fast enough but not that steep. Max speed is usually 40-ish on the top part, 45-ish on the more straight lower part (not the South Grade Road part). I love nailing apexes. I suffer for almost 2 hours to do a 30 min descent, and an hour into the climb I just keep thinking of how fun the descent will be.

I have a vid of it, from the helmet and from a seat post mounted cam. I'll have to put something together.

I also like Lake Wohlford's descent, for its turns, narrow roads, jersey barriers. I have that too, on helmet cam, so maybe I'll do another clip.

Both of them are in SoCal and I've done each maybe 8 times? Wohlford maybe 4 or 5 times. So I don't know them very well.

Around here I still don't know the roads so when I do a group ride and someone tells me there's a fun descent coming up, I go to the front.

Although my initial reaction to the "my neck hurts" bit used to be "work on your fit", I found the first time down Palomar that, indeed, I was freezing cold and my neck hurt. I was better after that - always brought some extra clothing. I found that my neck didn't hurt after that first descent, so maybe I was not really fit. Last time I went down the mountain (Jan? this year) I was fine, actually regretted not sprinting harder out of some of the turns, regretted not having an 11T.

Aero tucks are awesome - hands next to stem, chin over front tire. You pick up 5 mph easily, 10+ mph if you tuck on a steep enough grade. Sprint first and you hit terminal velocity sooner. It takes less than half a second to move to a drops position for braking etc. I avoid tucks only on if my hands or arms are tired, if it's gusty, or if the straights are short between hairpins. I'll stay in the tuck for sweepers.

cdr