Contrasting experiences on mountain bikes using V-brakes and disc brakes
I’m typing this with aching hands after a day’s mountain biking in the Forest of Bowland, near my home in Lancashire. Why are they aching? In a word (or is it two?): V-brakes.
The Bowland ride featured two major descents, totalling about 600m, with a high proportion of steep and fairly technical ground. Naturally this meant quite a lot of work for the brakes.
Having recently come back from a week in Austria, where descents of similar or greater length were a daily event, I was made freshly aware of how much work my hands had to do on these descents. In Austria I’d been riding on a bike with disc brakes, and the difference is massive. The discs not only gave greater stopping power, but a quicker, more predictable and more precise response. This all gives you confidence to roll through tricky sections more smoothly and quickly, knowing that you can slow or stop neatly if needed. And the effort needed from the hands and forearms is much less. In Bowland, on the other hand, I often felt like I needed to squeeze the levers for all I was worth to get the required stopping power (okay, it would help if I lost a bit of weight too!)
This experience has convinced me of two things:
1: I need to upgrade my mountain bike to one with discs.
2: it’s time to take a look at brakes and braking on these pages.
