I recently began road biking, However, I go faster up hill then down hill. I recently climbed a 3 mile mountain. That was the easy part. I was relaxed going up, but after a 3 miile desent I was shaking. My heart rate was higher on the desent. How do I overcome my fear. I was only going 11 12 mph down hill.

Ride with other people that can show you the correct techniques for riding downhill, including:
1. choosing a good line through the corners
2. keeping your upper body flexible
3. shifting your weight from side to side and front to back for improved traction and braking
4. when and how to use your brakes
5. looking ahead for road hazards

It just takes time and practice, dont be too nervous and keep your body relaxed and try to pick a line through a corner and follow it...

I think this is normal. You'll get over it with practice. A good thing to do is find a road with a gentle grade and wide sweeping turns. It's a big plus if you can find one that doesn't have blind driveways or any driveways. That way you will have less to worry about on the way down. Once you find a road like this, ride down your normal way. Then try going descending again except using the brakes 30% fewer times than you did before. Keep decreasing it until you only haev to tap the brakes a few times to maintain a reasonable speed. What defines reasonable is up to you. Some people feel comfortable descending at 50+ mph, others don't want to go over 40 or even 30.

I took the same approach when learning how to ride without hands. I'd put my hands on the bars, then lift them off and clap once. I repeated this a few times. Then I'd do the same thing, except clap twice to increase the time spent off the bars. I kept doing this until I could ride without hands for longer periods of time. The basic idea is to just do things in steps until you feel comfortable.


It's good you brought this up and want to work on it. riding your brakes on a long descent can heat the rims which isn't a good thing. You can get tire blowout that way when the heated rims make the tire pop. I don't think this will be a huge issue on a 3 mile descent, but if you were doing a 15-20 mile one it might. Also, by braking less your hands and arms will be a lot less fatigued at the end of a ride.

Well.....you just....do it. I don't know where you live, but try to pick a hill that doesn't have a ton of traffic, no unexpected potholes or anything (smooth pavement is ideal), make sure the route is fairly clear of any road debris, and shoot for say, 25 mph. However, if your bike handling skills aren't exactly up to par yet, I probably wouldn't venture much above 25-30 mph.

Once you can handle a bike well enough to be confident in your abilities, try for 30 mph. Then 35 mph....then 40 mph....and so on and so forth. Pretty soon you'll be bombing down the hills. Always remember to stay focused and look ahead where you're going, and that quick, jerky movements can be bad news at high speeds. Relax and try to be as smooth as possible. For some people, it comes naturally. For others, it doesn't and they have to work at it.

Fear and thoughts of self preservation start to kick in when my eyes start tearing so bad that I have trouble seeing. This is usually around 40-45mph. I've hit 48mph max on my road bike.

I routinely hit speeds of 19-23mph on the flats and speeds in the high 20s to low 30s on slight declines.

Just relax, you dont have to o fast downhill. If youjust want to get comfortable at a certain speed and then go 5 mp faster, when your comfortable there, step it up. Push your encelope, but dont ride outside it, youll be a danger to yourself and potentially other riders. I come from a motorcycle racing background so i already had the want to go fast and was comfortable at those speeds, downhills justkinda cme naturally.

Let go your feelings...the force will guide you.

I was the same way, then one day I was running late and it was going to get dark in about 10 minutes, and I had to cover 10 miles still. I went down the hill in a tuck and hit 40!

Still there is traffic and I'm not big on downhills, personally I think they're overrated as a skill, but highly dangerous. I can't stand it when BF members post about thier downhill times like they take the same amount of work as a high end sprint or climb.

+1

I think it is important to know how to descend, but I agree with you that it's not necessarily good for everyone to do it at some break neck speed. To me, if it's not a race and I don't make a living off it, I'm not going to kill myself to gain some seconds here or there. I do practice descending so that I can be safe on switch back corners, etc. and not have to ride the brakes on the way down and risk blowing out a tire.

Whats really scary is when your descending at 65 or so and passing cars on the freeway...

I second having a motorcycle history. Being comfortable on two wheels for me came from countless miles on four seperate motorcycles. On my second motorcycle, at 14 (the legal age in OK to have a motorcycle license) I hit 74 and thought I was king of the road, on my fourth bike, a '04 GSX-R 750 (the black and yellow one, 'cause it's faster) I've hit 176 on a track, of course. Once you've been that fast on two wheels, the speeds attainable on a bicycle seem like nothing. While you don't have to go triple digits on a motorcycle, riding one definitely helps to get comfortable with higher speeds on a bicycle.

-Barry-

i think riding a motorcycle(on track) has also taughtme how to pick good lines on downhills without losing alot of corner speed.

Work through it as soon as you can and start enjoying one of the best parts of cycling: bragging to your non-cycling friends about how fast you've gone.

One tip: look farther ahead of you. Give yourself as much time as you can to react to stuff that's coming your way.

+1
don't look where you don' want to go.

I also am trying to overcome fear of going fast down-hill. I was fine until about a year ago when I had a major blow-out of my front tire. I was only going about 30 mph but found myself scrambling to unclip from the pedals and get stopped as the front tire flopped from side to side off of the rim. No fun! Now I am apprehensive but working on it. I tell myself it is not likely to happen again, but by elbows begin to tremble involuntarily. If I was 25 I wouldn't think twice about a 45mph desent, but at 44 it takes longer to heal.

I would suggest starting to increase speed and comfort on straightaway downhill first. This will let you get used to the speed and be able to see far ahead. Scan up and down to see the entire road ahead, don't get fixated on a spot in front of the tyre. Find a long 1-mile straightaway, start riding it at 15mph, then 17mph, then 19mph, pretty soon, you'll be sprinting down that hill as fast as you can and passing up cars!

Then move on to learning the fast lines through a corner, these are lines that straighten out the curve as much as possible so that you can preserve as much speed as possible. The fastest line also happens to be the safest line because you lean the least through out the corner at any given speed. When going around corners, keep your eyes up and around the corner, look at the spot on the road that disappears around the corner. On the racetrack, it's close to the horizon. You automatically steer and turn the bike to head where your eyes are looking.

Don't force yourself to go faster than you feel comfortable. Also keep the cardinal rule in mind -- never go faster than you are willing to crash because someday you will.

Don't feel obligated to speed up just because everyone is blowing by you. Bombing down hills is all about relaxing, and if you're not ready, you just need to wait. If something goes wrong, maintaining a cool head is the best way to avoid/reduce injury.

In all likelihood, the fear will go away with time as you become more experienced and gain confidence. There's no need to rush things. As you become a better rider, you'll get better at handling difficult situations and you'll also be able to control your bike better in a crash.

I'd find some small rolling hills... and gradually build up speed. Gradually increase the hill grade and length... and you'll do fine.

Maybe it's my age (20) but to me the best part of climbing a hill is being able to sit there and go 30-40mph down it.

I guess the best way to get over the fear is to just keep doing it. I rollerblade and when there is something i wnat to do but am afraid to do it, i start small and work my way up. Like anything i suppose...

heh, you would have **** your pants today at a local race, we had some pretty fast descents and i was in full tuck for most of them pulling 70 or 80km/h on just short hills.

For those who haven't seen, a full bike tuck is puting your cranks at 3 and 9 o clock, squeezing your legs together, grab the tops of your bars right next to the stem, lean forward and rest your chin almost on the bars between your hands and stick your butt up in the air to level out your back, that's about as good as it gets for a human on a standard road bike.

As mentioned above i'm sure, ride with other's in a friendly or competetive group chances are you'll be more fixated on keeping up then worrying about slowing down.

Pro's often pull 110km/h going down some of those giant mountains that take them 20 minutes to climb, do you think they're worrying about how their face would look painted on the pavement for the next 400 meters? of course not, truth is if you crash at those speeds, the only thing that will survive is your helmet strap, and a part of the carbon sole from your shoe, oh, and a ball of tinfoil like metal that was your bike. At those speeds, rolling with the fall is barely even an option, just pray you have really thick bones
So like i was saying, just keep up, and let your instincts get you down the mountain. Think of it this way, the faster you get down, the less time you have to screw up or crash.

Hmm... interesting... I came across a wreck one time pretty soon after it happened. The guy's clothes was completely stripped off his body, probably within the first 10-20m or so. Then the bloody-smear started as he slid and tumbled across the rough pavement. The corners like knees, elbows, fingers, shoulders, hip-bones were ground completely down to the bone and beyond. A lot of the flesh and muscles were ripped off as well, no buttocks left, one forearm was missing, the other had all the muscles stripped off. The intestines and organs where left at various points in the slide, stomach at 70m liver at 75m, spleen@85m, intestines stretched from 65-95m. Strange thing was all the body-fat everywhere, it's not like the white beef-fat you see at the butchers, it's more rounded, smooth and yellow, like chicken-fat. If it wasn't for the shoes sticking out of the lump of flesh at the end of the smear, I wouldn't have known it was a human. Not sure how fast he was going when he crashed though...

I've been going downhill fast since about the age of 45.

WOW! the same exact thing happend to me.... but we couldn't tell if it was a deer or a person, so we took it home and ate it anyways!

shep, The best thing to do is find nice smooth pavement at a little incline. then just practice going down the hill slowly at first. Once you get more comfortable slowly increase your speed.....

On some of these PA roads I still get freaked out...... you never know when a corner could have gravel, a huge pot hole, or rollers (uneven pavement with bumpsthroughout)...... Thats why finding good pavement to practice on is a premium.

Well, if it tasted like chicken, it was probably human!!!