A little footage from Chris Doan, from last weekend’s Water Tower race down in Austin. Radicalness…

A rad downhill video — from some race, somewhere I don’t know, that I know nothing about. Still, a fun video. Watch…

Oh yeah, I went to my little hill tonight for a few good runs. The wind was with me, so the hill was relatively fast (for here). Low 20s. Still it is a nice run, and the crappy concrete makes it at least a little bit gnarly.

Some killer footage from my pal Borto.

Here are some shots of the downhill event. I started at the bottom of the hill, and worked my way to the top as the heats progressed. Thus, this isn’t one race, but clips of quite a few at different points on the course.

I made no real effort to edit this footage a lot. Figured some of the riders might want to see it all. So here it is.

The course itself starts at top of the hill, and is initially very steep. The riders pick up a lot of speed. After that first fast section, the street levels out for about 100 yards, I’d say. The riders have to carry their speed through this part. Then the really steep part, where they were running the Giant Slalom earlier. When you are on the flat part, looking east, it looks like the road just drops off. It sort of does. At that point, the riders pick up massive speed, and whip around the turn at the bottom. The road then curves, goes over a bridge, and it uphill for a bit — a good place to scrub their speed.

Here is a video that will be pretty boring unless you are in it — the time trials for the 2010 Sizzler’s downhill event. The riders were skating to determine their placement with within the 4-person heats. They were starting about halfway down the hill, so speeds were not as fast as in the actually races. However, they were still probably around 30mph, may a bit faster.

Anyway, this video is just one skater after another flying by. We were on the steep part of the course, right before the finish line.