Max speed

On Dec 10, 7:51 pm, ray wrote:
I've reached 85 k/mh on three
separate occasions, once on a single bike, west coast Tassie, and twice
on a tandem, different locations Vic.
I found all three downright scary. Almost blind from wind tears, one
rock, pothole or twitch at that speed and you're dead. It's definitely a
hoot, but not one I seek out.

In that case, you most definitely don't want to try riding down Mt St
Leonards, near Healesville.

It's been many years since I've shot for record speeds down there - a
gated firetrail losing about 500m in 8km - but we used to break the
80km/h barrier pretty easily. This is on hardtails, with what passed
for XC suspension forks in the late '90s.

Rocks and potholes aren't as much of an issue as you'd expect. 80kg or
so of rider has a lot of momentum, and 12kg or so of bike has
significantly less. If the bike gets knocked off line, you pull it
back under you and keep hanging on. The ridiculously fast sections
were short enough that a pinch-flatted tyre would still have a little
bit of air left in it by the roll-out at the end. Many tubes were
patched at that point.

Extraordinarily silly stuff, but we were younger and sillier. We
didn't die.

tim

You could come to Canberra and ride the Fitz's Challenge. A few years back a
fairly large bloke in the bunch I was riding with had his speedo indicating
a max of 104kph after we descended Fitz's Hill. Mind you, I think someone
died after crashing on the same descent on last year's ride. When we come
down that hill on the tandem my stoker sits up to catch the wind when she
sees 95 on her speedo. Says the only three figures she wants to reach are in
her old age.

Nick

"TimC" wrote in message
...
For anyone wondering, the max speed you can reach down a hill is
unrelated to what cassette you have on.

I inadvertantly replaced a 12-26 with a 13-26 (I could have sworn the
original had 13T written on it, but it's not like I had a choice given
I was mail ordering and the supplier didn't do anything else, 8-speed
wise). But it turns out you can do 87.45km/h on an Giant '05 OCR3
(2km/h faster than previously on that hill, and 5km/h faster than any
time I have actually bothered to record it in my logfile). I refuse
to confirm or deny whether I had a slightly hairy moment at the
bottom, wondering whether I could completely negotiate the slight
curve with the added nervousness of a truck coming up the other way.
No speed wobbles though -- for a cheap aluminium frame, I guess that's
something.

Considering I only ever got to 86km/h once, drafting Gags down the
warrandyte descent, I guess I can look favourably upon today's slight
wind.

Still missed my PB average by about 20 seconds. And today was with
the bus on my tail for a km or so through some twisty passages --
added some incentive to crack an average of 60km/h through that
section.

I also refuse to confirm nor deny whether I got to my front lawn,
struggled off the bike, poured the tap over me, and sat down on the
gutter for 5 minutes. Seems kinda pointless to save a few minutes on
the commute, then blow it all away by sitting on the gutter, but it
was fun

"Gags" wrote:

I am pretty sure that it is Harris Gully Rd - as you come down the hill
from the Reynolds Rd end of it just after the fruit market and the left
hand bend in the road. The hill is fairly long and it gets steeper about
two thirds of the way down.

You rolled off the top at 30kmh and rolled to 87kmh!!! Man, you must be
carrying a bit of weight. I've never rolled past about 70!! (I am a whippet
though)


--
Cheers
Peter

~~~ ~ _@
~~ ~ _- \,
~~ (*)/ (*)

PeteSig Wrote: [color=blue]
"Gags" wrote:


You rolled off the top at 30kmh and rolled to 87kmh!!! Man, you must
be
carrying a bit of weight. I've never rolled past about 70!! (I am a
whippet
though)


Mass is a wonderful thing on a downhill. We can easily hit over 90 on
the tandem with a rolling weight of at least 170kgs. We only bother
pedalling to about 70km/hr and just tuck in and coast after that.

Cheers

Geoff


--
geoffs

PeteSig wrote:
You rolled off the top at 30kmh and rolled to 87kmh!!! Man, you must be
carrying a bit of weight. I've never rolled past about 70!! (I am a whippet
though)

Same here. I weight just on 60 kg and rarely make it above ~74 kph. My
weight disadvantage is telling on a particular hill here in Canberra
during road races. When I'm in a bunch with big guys I lose them on the
downhill with them coasting and me spinning in top gear!

Remove "yourfinger" before replying

Bean Long wrote:
PeteSig wrote:
You rolled off the top at 30kmh and rolled to 87kmh!!! Man, you must
be carrying a bit of weight. I've never rolled past about 70!! (I am a
whippet though)

Same here. I weight just on 60 kg and rarely make it above ~74 kph. My
weight disadvantage is telling on a particular hill here in Canberra
during road races. When I'm in a bunch with big guys I lose them on the
downhill with them coasting and me spinning in top gear!

Remove "yourfinger" before replying

I suspect you won't get a lot of sympathy for being too light in a hilly
race.

DaveB "wishing he had that problem"

DaveB wrote:

I suspect you won't get a lot of sympathy for being too light in a hilly
race.

DaveB "wishing he had that problem"

Yeah... unfortunately I'm a crap climber. You get no sympathy at the
back of the bunch!

--
Bean
Remove "yourfinger" before replying

"PeteSig" wrote in message
...

"Gags" wrote:

I am pretty sure that it is Harris Gully Rd - as you come down the hill
from the Reynolds Rd end of it just after the fruit market and the left
hand bend in the road. The hill is fairly long and it gets steeper about
two thirds of the way down.

You rolled off the top at 30kmh and rolled to 87kmh!!! Man, you must be
carrying a bit of weight. I've never rolled past about 70!! (I am a
whippet though)


Well, I am 100kg riding a 63.5cm steel-framed Eddy Merckx - go the gravity
turbo!!!

I actually had to do a medical a couple of days ago and weighed in at 101kg
which, when combined with my height of 195cm gave me a BMI of about 26 or
so - this is about a third of the way into the "Overweight" band. What a
croc of **** - clearly the charts are made for people who don't exercise and
therefore have minimal muscle mass as I am a fair way away from what you
would call fat!!!

Gags

Gags wrote:

I actually had to do a medical a couple of days ago and weighed in at 101kg
which, when combined with my height of 195cm gave me a BMI of about 26 or
so - this is about a third of the way into the "Overweight" band. What a
croc of **** - clearly the charts are made for people who don't exercise and
therefore have minimal muscle mass as I am a fair way away from what you
would call fat!!!

Yep, you got it in one. Brilliant system isn't it.

Imagine my expressions to the news that to tackle childhood obesity,
they are going to weigh and BMI all 4 years olds and school teachers are
going to do it.

When even the quacks stuff up, we are going to let a bunch of people who
can not adequately teach what they are supposed to (don't mention
science) apply a system without any scientific backing to a bunch of
kids that are still to go through a number of radical body changes.