3 ms·

I've gone 51 mph (82 kph) on an upright road bike going down a 17% grade. Terrifying. 60kph is fun but scary. But sprinting is really exciting. It is a full eff

I've gone 51 mph (82 kph) on an upright road bike going down a 17% grade. Terrifying. 60kph is fun but scary. But sprinting is really exciting. It is a full effort acceleration from stand still to as fast as you can spin. It feels really intense and crazy with the bike flexing and twisting from the effort. It only lasts a few seconds but those feel like peak experience. I imagine the cheetah feels something similar.

sundvor 8y ago
Yep, similar to my experience. I came to the conclusion that doing so on a road bike with all but a flimsy helmet for protection is nuts. I've been on a Superbike on Phillip Island Circuit cornering at maybe ~200km/h, which was even more mind bending but also felt marginally safer due to proper leathers and full face helmet, and removal of random traffic factors + using machinery designed for that purpose.
chrismorgan 8y ago
Somewhere around 80km/h on a fairly-long-and-steep-by-Australian-standards hill is the most I’ve done on an upright road bike, but that wasn’t with pedalling by the top speeds. Trying to accelerate by pedalling at those speeds on a bicycle is very dangerous. You can only sanely manage it if your gearing is way higher than the typical road bike has, and the vehicle is well-maintained so that you can be confident you won’t have any slipping chain (an easy recipe for disaster in such a situation). In the anecdote I started this thread with, I was on a trike which is inherently stable, so it was much safer for me; and I was just rolling down it rather than pedalling—and I stayed at the top speed for at least a minute or two, because the mountain was that long and steep! (It had taken a long time to get up the other side of the hill, perhaps an hour or an hour and a half, I don’t recall precisely. Fortunately I got this payoff!)

3 ms·

I've gone 51 mph (82 kph) on an upright road bike going down a 17% grade. Terrifying. 60kph is fun but scary. But sprinting is really exciting. It is a full eff

by davidgould 8y ago

sundvor 8y ago
Yep, similar to my experience. I came to the conclusion that doing so on a road bike with all but a flimsy helmet for protection is nuts. I've been on a Superbike on Phillip Island Circuit cornering at maybe ~200km/h, which was even more mind bending but also felt marginally safer due to proper leathers and full face helmet, and removal of random traffic factors + using machinery designed for that purpose.
chrismorgan 8y ago
Somewhere around 80km/h on a fairly-long-and-steep-by-Australian-standards hill is the most I’ve done on an upright road bike, but that wasn’t with pedalling by the top speeds. Trying to accelerate by pedalling at those speeds on a bicycle is very dangerous. You can only sanely manage it if your gearing is way higher than the typical road bike has, and the vehicle is well-maintained so that you can be confident you won’t have any slipping chain (an easy recipe for disaster in such a situation). In the anecdote I started this thread with, I was on a trike which is inherently stable, so it was much safer for me; and I was just rolling down it rather than pedalling—and I stayed at the top speed for at least a minute or two, because the mountain was that long and steep! (It had taken a long time to get up the other side of the hill, perhaps an hour or an hour and a half, I don’t recall precisely. Fortunately I got this payoff!)