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Climbing and Descending
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what sort of average elevation gain and loss / 25 miles do you normally see in your regular rides?

for races with significant descending - IM France - there's opportunities to make up time / places descending, on alpine type descents, what sort of speeds would be reasonable? or considered fairly aggressive descending?

I'm pondering this having ridden outside for the first time today since July 4th last year.
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Re: Climbing and Descending [Andrewmc] [ In reply to ]
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Andrewmc wrote:
what sort of average elevation gain and loss / 25 miles do you normally see in your regular rides?

for races with significant descending - IM France - there's opportunities to make up time / places descending, on alpine type descents, what sort of speeds would be reasonable? or considered fairly aggressive descending?

I'm pondering this having ridden outside for the first time today since July 4th last year.
Around here (Calgary, AB, Canada) you can easily accumulate 1000 feet of elevation gain (and loss) on a 25 mile ride. If you pick your route right (?) you can get over 3000 feet. That would include some descents with opportunity for 40 mph+ corners.
Speed on such terrain should match your ability to handle both your bike, the traffic, the particular road conditions (road surface as well as surface contamination), and weather (wind/rain). "Aggressive descending" would be where the pucker factor increases beyond 5, but without actually crashing or needlessly endangering oneself or others.

You need to get out and ride more, and practice carving corners. If you don't know what "reasonable" speed is then I suggest you first refer to the "ride safe" thread that Anth started a couple of days ago, and THEN go out and ride more.

Less is more.
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Re: Climbing and Descending [Big Endian] [ In reply to ]
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Echoing those stats: live in bay area CA and an average "flat" ride (there isn't any flat on the peninsula/SF area) is around 1200 per 25 mi. You could put 5K into 25 miles if you just lapped the climbs.

I used to race downhill mountain bikes (and won a national championship) so I like descending. I'll share this tidbit with you: maxing out high speed sections is your worst investment of energy, even in a 5 minute gated race like DH. Why? 5 mph faster is only a 10% increase when you're doing 50 mph. Also, air resistance grows exponentially. Most importantly, there is such a massive amount of risk at that speed since you're above and beyond human reaction time for small errors (i.e. pebble in the road). Don't do it. There really aren't "opportunities to make up time descending" unless you are currently riding the brakes at 15mph no matter how steep/straight the hill.

Prevailing wisdom in triathlon is you shouldn't be pedaling past 30mph. For tri descending, I'd say the fastest you should go is where you're drawing smooth lines around corners and you're in complete control. Anything else is stupid at best, grossly negligent at worst.
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