- It can feel super fast bombing those downhill runs
on your mountain bike, but just how fast are you going?
An average speed for a normal ride for me
is something about 11 or 12 miles an hour, so pretty slow.
Max speed's something like 20, 25, so not really that fast.
But today it's all about topping that,
seeing how fast I can go on a mountain bike.
(rock music)
Well this section feels fast, it's pretty wide open
in the woods, but let's put a figure to how fast it is.
Feels pretty fast bombing through these trees.
(rock music)
So two runs, I did a 26 miles an hour
and then one slightly slower, 24 miles an hour.
That's not bad for a UK downhill track,
where it's fairly tight in the woods.
I mean it's nothing compared to those
old World Cup downhill tracks I used to ride.
Some of those big Alpine meadows would have been super fast,
but that does feel quite quick.
(rock music)
Right, so this is a tight, technical bit,
it's quite loose actually.
I know the maximum speed isn't gonna be much,
but it feels fast when you're trying to master this stuff.
But let's see for comparison's sake, how fast it's gonna be.
I reckon it'll be lucky to be 15 miles an hour through here.
(rock music)
What was that? 17?
That's all right, that's not too bad.
(rock music)
23? 23? That's disappointing.
- [Man] (laughs)
- Tell you what, it's not going fast that's hard really,
it's the slowing down a mountain bike.
You forget you've only got so much grip.
And I've put my bigger tire on the back as well,
I've put a Baron on the back, so I've got
a good gripping edge on it, with good braking edge.
But still slowing down when you have to,
takes you a little while.
(laughs) That's it, I daren't go any faster than that.
Topped out at 25 miles an hour.
Right, I reckon that's pretty much
as fast as I can go in the woods.
But for comparison's sake, let's take the bike onto the road
and I'll pedal it, see what speed I can get up to.
(grunts)
- [Man] 30 miles an hour.
- (exhales) 30 miles an hour.
The road is slightly downhill, but just enough
to get me into my biggest gear, not really helped too much.
But I can't be having that,
I can't be having my fastest speed on a road.
We need a plan B.
Well that was pretty fast, but it's time to get serious.
I've found the biggest, most open hillside that I know of.
And it's time to see just how fast I can go.
(electronic music)
58 miles an hour, didn't get 60, rain has stopped play.
I couldn't quite get my goggles clear then,
so it was a bit sketchy coming over the top
and I don't know how much grip there is.
Typical, it's not rained in weeks.
I reckon this is the best hill around here,
I reckon you could do 60, if I didn't brake going over
the top of that brow, got my line spot on.
But I reckon that's about the limit for dirt.
Well especially in the UK, we've only got small hills here,
300 meters, 400 meters elevation.
Possibly in the Alps you go faster than that,
but that's not a bad effort, I thought.
Are there any conclusions to come from this video?
Well I know that I really enjoy trying
to go fast on my mountain bike,
but really in the woods you can't go very fast.
You've really gotta get out into
the open stuff to go super fast.
So almost 60 miles an hour, not quite.
But I'm way off the record, that's held by Markus Stockl,
that's 167 kilometers an hour, 103 miles an hour.
That was done on snow and I think
you've gotta do it there really.
I do remember that video, really old video of
that guy going down the volcano and his fork snapping off.
That didn't end very well.
But snow's a fast way of doing it, I've done
about 85 miles an hour at the Saas-Fee Glacier race.
So I need to try and repeat that,
try and go as fast as I can.
If you wanna see Blake going really fast
in the Megavalanche, that is a very fast race,
click up there for that one.
Give thumbs up if you like to go fast on your mountain bike
and hit that sub button if you've not done already.