How fast?

Of course it is red. I hit just a hair over 50 going downhill once before I lost my nerve and feathered the brakes. Not many hills to go down around here, though.

I've hit near 60 on a hill with a tail wind. About made me crap my pants. Especially when you consider a single pothole at that speed would collapse the wheel and make you a smear on the asphault, and there is no way you could see it coming or react in time to miss it.

63 mph once in Colorado going down from Berthoud Pass. 58 was the fastest I've been in New England, going down Crawford Notch in New Hampshire. Hit 52 at IM Lake Placid last July going into Keene NY.

Either way you slice it, on a bike it feels like you're doing 100!

I hit 57 also on Keene Hill at IMLP in '04.....all I could think of is "Please God don't let my wheel fail, or my sew on peel off the rim". Definintely high on the pucker factor.

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Edited by Chris Tree 2006-01-10 5:30 AM

50+ on mountain descents when I lived in California.

54 mph down Squaw Pass during the Triple Bypass last year. Sad thing was I was trying to catch to other cyclist I know that past me going down the pass. Never caught up to them. They passed me when I was only going a measly 45 mph.

58 on a downhill. Where I live, getting into the 50's is a fairly regular occurrance. We have lots of short, steep hills. What's really cool is passing cars on some of the mountain descents around here (pass on the left).

My fastest descent to date has been 49.7 miles per hour.  I've tried over the years to get that extra .3 miles per hour out of the old bike but the hill I run down is just not long enough, it being only about 1 mile in length.  Even so, at that speed, it is quite exilirating!!!!

maybe it's the geek in me, but I wonder what terminal velocity is on a bike. I know it will be different for different people and different bikes, but it should be close. I also wonder how much of a difference an aero bike would make. After all the least aero part of the entire system is the rider, which has higher drag then the bike by several orders of magnitude.