Originally Posted by datlas

So I have a question. Maybe I should ask the marginal gains podcast gang, but I will start here. My suspicion is it doesn’t make much of a difference, but the question involves whether you should pedal downhill when going medium pace, say at 25MPH on a 3-4% downhill. I usually do soft pedal at maybe 50-100w, and I expect that gets me only 1 MPH faster than just coasting. It’s easy to calculate the gain/cost using an online calculator to estimate the aero benefits of coasting vs pedaling and the speed difference at coasting vs soft-pedaling. The harder part is figuring out if the modest power output “costs” anything from future output needed when the inevitable next climb starts.