O.K. So here's the deal. I have been rideing fixed for a few months now. After about a week I went brakeless (I am happy with this, please do not try to convert me to braked rideing). I am of course getting stronger and stronger the longer I ride and at this point the only time I am not confident is going down hills. I was wondering if anyone had any vetran tips on succesfully navigating a steep downhill. *please excuse any spelling or gramerical errors*

Here are some veteran tips. So why would a sane person want to go downhill without brakes? These are not the rational thoughts of the survival instincts of humans. But wtf, I might be missing the thrill of a lifetime! Carrening downhill willy nilly without brakes might be a great way to spend an afternoon!

I ride with a brake, but I've done a bit of brakeless riding, so here's my limited experience.

- Plan ahead. If the way is clear you can just bomb down as fast as you like. Some people even clip out.

- Otherwise, don't go fast. Go down the hill with back pressure on the pedals controlling your speed at all times.

- Steep hills are pretty frightening. Try to avoid them. If you can't, see the above. You can add to this "tacking" the way a ship does. This cuts the effective slope of the hill at the cost of increasing it's effective length and requires more lateral space.

- If you're going faster than you wanted and need to shed some speed, you can always try the front brake trick with your shoe or glove. I've never done either and it seems like there's a lot of opportunity to put yourself in a world of hurt. You can also carve the slop skier style while applying back pressure.

- Don't skid. In order to skid you probably have to unweight the rear wheel. So you're skidding, but you are carrying much of your weight on the freely rotating wheel. Maximum braking occurs just before you begin to skid.

Of all of these, the first is the most important. Plan your route to avoid uncontrollable descents.

sharp side to side turns with skip skids on the sideways parts to slow momentum. Also, if you live in a hilly area, drop down the chainring a couple teeth to make it easier. If you see a light change at the bottom, go for it, otherwise it's a real pain in the legs to have to make a complete stop on a steep hill.

when i go riding on bainbridge island, i love the hills. they're rolling, sparsely driven on, and rarely contain traffic lights. i start fast, and if i feel like my spin is about to get out of contol, a few quick skips and my cadence is reduced. and there's no need to come to a complete stop.

city hills, of course, are quite different. rarely can i use the side-to-side carving technique, and often the hills are too long to go at a walking pace.

i agree: plan ahead. know the traffic patterns of the hill area, the length of the traffic lights, and watch for hidden driveways/street entrances!

i need to skid on some of the hills in seattle. they're just too long and steep. it will slow you down.

learnt to skid/skip with both feet forward. for a given distance, you'll theoretically be able to skip twice as much. and if you know that there's a traffic light at the bottom, try to control your velocity so that you'll hit it when it's green. sometimes this is not possible, so if you're going to run that red make sure you can see (and avoid) any crossing cars.

skip as much as you can.

prepare for the unexpected. recently, a driver attemped to make a u-turn (from the opposite direction into my lane) on my downhill morning commute. she wasn't able to make the turn was perpendicular to traffic as i was coming towards her. not something i planned, but i needed to do something to avoid slamming into her.

if you ride with clips, tighten your straps. if you ride clipless, replace your cleats every couple of months. worn cleats will pull out.

and, finally, think about how you would crash your bike as safely as possible. walk down the hill nand look at the objects that you can use to accomplish this.

these work for me riding brakeless in seattle. i use a brake sometimes, if my legs are tired or it's wet (often in the winter, then).

always be wearing cycling gloves. if you run into a tight spot, you can grab your front tire with the padded part of your glove. this has saved me several times.

Personally, I find slamming into cars or sign posts stops me best. Brakes, psshhh, what are those for!

Well, thanks for that guys. One thing that rideing fixed w/o brakes has definitely tought me is to look ahead and open up your peripheral vision. And. Yes. Rideing no brakes downhill does have a cretain adrenaline rush assosiated with it. Sometimes your exactly right. You just have to say "what the ****!"

Many years ago before I knew the power of gravity I was lucky to find a nice soft bush through some ones garden in there front yard to fall into. Don't underestimate the power of the force of gravity. For any givin rider with any given gear ratio and steepness of hill you very well may not be able to stop. I avoid steeps now. But some times you get one so what I do is pretty much stop at the top make a game plan and go by half pedal strokes holding slides in between. slolom if necessary.

I usually try to be slowing down the whole downhill, especially if there is a stop sign/light at the bottom. If I get most of the way down and can see it's clear, then I will start accelerating again. It's not always possible, and there have been a few hills that I did get off the bike and walk down.

Last night I almost got myself seriously hurt on the way back from the saturday night ride - there were four of us on the way back to uptown, going down a long slight downhill with stop signs every couple of blocks. Of course we were blowing all of them. About halfway down, we noticed a car on the left when we were about 10-15 feet back from the intersection. I knew I couldn't stop, so I sped up and went to the right to give myself a couple of extra milliseconds... Then I noticed there was a car in the next lane (on the right) and had to swerve back to the left halfway through the intersection. I didn't have any time to see how close the cars were, but it couldn't have been more than 20 feet.

It took me about a block to get rid of the speed I built up punching it through the intersection, and I asked everyone to slow it down when they caught up, because it took about 5 blocks for me to start breathing again.

Sometimes there is no way to stop, and adding speed is the only option. It's scary and dangerous, but it's a fact of life riding brakeless.

I heard the gong from Kung Fu after that one!

word, I think thats going on my desktop.

Milo

well, i have a brake, but i don't use it really, so it's sort of similar. i would say just go slow with some backpressure on the pedals. if you're going fast, think way ahead, and if you want to slow down just skip the back wheel a bit. i agree, though, that full-on skids aren't the best idea.