Originally Posted by
phughes
Why are people braking so much downhill? The only time I brake going downhill is when the cars ahead of me are going too slow and I have to brake to slow to their speed. At the same time I am muttering about stupid slow drivers. I live in the Pittsburgh area, and we have plenty of hills. I also commuted in the Ozarks, which also has lots of hills. Both places gave me speeds of up to 45 mph on downhills if I wanted to push, and in the Pittsburgh area, that is coupled with nice curves. You can keep the speeds down more by sitting upright, using wind resistance to slow you down.
Yeah, I have ridden place where you could descend 5000' without braking. I have also ridden where the turns were super tight or the surface really bad and speed needed to be kept low.
Oh, and rims last a long time. If you are wearing rims out in two years, you are doing it wrong. See above.
Depends on how many miles per year you are riding and what kind of miles. I think I might have worn out a MTB rim in two years at some point when I was riding a lot of muddy runs and riding pretty close to daily back in the day. On the road I don't think I have ever worn out a rim in less 60-70k miles (best guess), but someone might do that in two years.