Originally Posted by
Trakhak
Answering the OP's question directly, to avoid being chided by the self-appointed thread police:
I was always still in control at the fastest speed my track bike was capable of on steep descents. Riding with a 51/19 setup (42-inch gear, approximately), I hit around 225 rpm on descents many times over the decades. Scary but tolerable. The limiter with that gear ratio seemed to be wind resistance and not cadence. (Past tense because, at 68, I'm unwilling to test the limits the way I used to.)
The trick seems to be to flick your feet forward with each pedal stroke and to let the pedals drag them around the rest of the way. Trying to pedal in circles at high cadences is a mug's game.
That sounds like my experience with Oakland's Juaquim Miller Road. 42 x 17. RPMs on that range. I had no electronics on that bike so I don't really know but it was both very fast and very, very high RPM. I didn't think "circles". It was just "don't fight the bike". And I was, like you, air resistance limited. IN much more recent years I have been clocked at 35 on Portland hills in roughly the same gear. That 35 didn't come remotely close to the RPMS and speed I used to do. (I wasn't kidding about the young and crazy part in the post above.)
On that hill I needed to keep some level of control as there was a stop sign at the bottom.
Ben