Thatmanifests in race results. My hypothesis is that some of what we consider endurance in trail running is actually individual-specific ability to run downhills fast without excess fatigue, which varies based on training and genetics, including muscle-fiber distribution. In other words, what feels like inadequate fitness or climbing ability may actually inadequate downhill preparation for your individual physiology.
A small version of that fake experiment happens every other year when the U.S. Mountain Running Championships is run on an up-down loop course. In general, athletes who are more experienced trail runners excel more on up-and-down looped years the more loops there are, more than in the uphill-only years. My guess is that pattern would be more emphatic if the races were longer.
Even at less steep grades, impact forces are greater and neuromuscular strain varies. A 2016 review article in the European Journal of Applied Physiology found increased tissue damage and tiredness with sustained downhill running. In the best cases, that can lead to excess fatigue relative to fitness levels. While your heart rate is low, your speed can slow down substantially. At worst, it can cause muscle damage that slows you down to a shuffle even as you have plenty of energy left to burn.
With all that out of the way, here are five tips to seize the free speed on downhills. While these tips matter at the front of the pack, I think they are often even more important at the back where staying ahead of cutoffs makes it important to use the faster miles that are dictated by the course.
There is no exact prescription dictated by studies or training theory, but around once a month as race season approaches, I like athletes to make it the goal to run efficiently down as many steeper downhills as they can.
Physiologically, most athletes will have relatively low heart rate on downhills, even as the effort feels slightly higher at first. Bringing perceived exertion and output closer together can make it so that you can attack every downhill you see on race day.
For athletes in flat areas: do some repeats on whatever slight hills you have, including overpasses or treadmills with a downhill option. Another coach told me of an athlete who did this on stairs, taking two at a time, but there are not enough liability release forms in the world to make me recommend that to you.
I am generally not a huge fan of downhill workouts since the increased impact forces create lots of injury risk. But actually going very fast on downhills can have outsized benefits, even if you just do it once every 6-8 weeks. A good example may be my wife, Megan, who always thought of herself as a bad downhill runner until she was being chased by superstar Magda Boulet at a trail race in 2013. Megan ran so hard that the soles of her feet burned off, and she has been a fast downhill runner ever since.
Training races are the best places to do this, but you can also do hard hill tempos (like Course 2 in the hypothetical) or intervals with downhills included. Doing some of your weekly workouts on variable grades can accomplish the same goal.
For athletes in flat areas: this element is extra important, with squats and deadlifts a couple times per week being one of the best additions you can make to your training. Plyometrics are great options as well.
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I guess Tacx and Zwift might just be trying to level the playing field and keep some resistance there to compete with the dumb trainer riders, but I find the downhill feel annoying in a trainer that, as Andreas Huber said, is so realistic otherwise.
Andreas, it is a limitation of smart trainer, not the Zwift setting. As I said, Tacx Neo Smart can only simulate up to 5% decline/downhill. I think most smart trainers do not even simulate downhills since they cannot drive rear wheel forward.
I had an older Tacx Bushido (the older one with no flywheel) and often (even in the TTS4 software) had the same problem. In TTS4 randomly I would have a ride where the downhill was essentially freewheeling (about 1 in 10 rides) while most of the time the rides were making me pedal hard on downhills to not coast to a stop. In Zwift it was less like this, but still the downhills do not feel like real downhills.
I had some settings at times where depending upon a mix of the supposed Tacx Bushido calibration and rider weight and slop that had my wattage uphill reported by the Bushido as maybe 2/3 to 1/2 of my actual power and then cresting a hill and going downhill I would pedal with little pressure and my power would be reported as nearly double what I put out on the uphill. That all seemed to relate to the Tacx software/hardware mix reporting the wrong values to Zwift more than anything. However, Zwift is also feeding things back to the trainer for resistance and seems not entirely blameless.
At least for my newer Bushido, I have finally been able to some reasonable compromise out of it by playing for a long time with the notoriously wrong (at least for Bushido) calibration, rider weight and slope. It has been a long fight to something close to acceptable. Perhaps with the Neo there is something internal that is not a parameter you can see that is locking you into one of the bad scenarios I had for years on the Bushido and in particular the old Bushido?
My name's Dale and I've been a Downhill Skateboarder for around 6 years now. In this Instructable I hope to pass on my knowledge to those just starting out, so that you can build and configure your perfect Longboard.
For your first Downhill Skateboard, I'd recommend choosing a stiff downhill specific deck that has anything between 26 to 34 inch wheelbase. Most decks have 9 - 9.5 inch width, but if your feet are bigger than size 12 UK, then you could get 10 inch width. Most of the recommended websites filter by width and length when searching.
Some boards come pre-gripped, but for downhill it's best to have extra coarse griptape, so that your feet stay in position easier whilst sliding. Some of the best Extra Coarse brands of Griptape or RDVX, Vicious, Seismic or MOB. When buying a deck, you can usually ask a shop to grip a deck for you.
Arguably the most important part of any Downhill Skateboard, Truck technology has come a long way in the past 10-15 years. Everyone nowadays rides 'Reverse Kingpin' Trucks, which look and feel different to your 'Traditional' Kingpin street skateboard trucks aka TKPs. Most sets of trucks you buy come as symmetrical, meaning they have the same degrees of turn on both trucks. This is usually between 40-50 degrees, for lots of turn. Although 'precision' trucks exist that come as asymmetrical (less degrees of turn on your rear truck, for more stability), for your first time setup, I'd recommend symmetrical, so that you can get used to controlling any small instabilities, this will improve your board balance. Good brands to start with, are: Caliber, Paris, Randall or Seismic.
Bushings go hand in hand with Trucks, they allow your trucks to progressively turn. You will usually find default bushings come with Trucks for free, but they are usually cheap and either too hard, or too soft for you. In the pictures above is a weight guide for what 'durometer' (softness) bushings will likely suit you. A lower durometer denotes a softer bushing, meaning it takes less weight to be able to compress/turn it in your trucks. Vice versa for hard bushings. Again, this is only a guide, you may have to swap and change, but as they are cheap, it's usually not an issue. I'm 77kg/169lb and have been riding 95a 'Venom' Boardside (closest to deck) & 88a 'Riptide' Roadside (closest to the road) in both my trucks for years. There are lots of different shapes of bushings that do things slightly differently, but in my opinion it's a lot easier to just go with standard 'barrel' bushings, as they're most popular and therefore have more variety.
Wheels and Bearings have also advanced a lot in the last few years, it used to be that Soft wheels gave you more grip and hard wheels made it easier to slide. Although this still applies in some cases, the urethane compounds used nowadays allow some softer wheels to still slide incredibly easily. Getting a set of 'slide wheels' when learning to downhill skateboard is the best way to go, as you learn how to slide at slower speeds. Some of the best brands/wheels for this are: Slide Perfect Supremacy, Remember PeeWee, Powell Peralta Snakes & Cult Chronicles. These wheels are more than good enough to cruise around on too. Once you have learnt how to slide these wheels at low speeds, you can progress to grippier wheels that slow you down more at higher speeds.
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