Quote Originally Posted by Pedal Wench View Post
But, how does one, after years of descending on the hoods, transition down to the drops? I think about it and can't even imagine feeling stable enough. Do you try it on a gentle grade first to build up to the steep stuff?
Well, in my case, it just happened. I know that's a non-answer.

I always descended on the hoods as well, which worked well with my previous set-up; the brake-only levers worked fine from the hoods.

But once I changed from bar-end shifting to the Ultegra dual shift-brake levers, braking from the hoods didn't work nearly as well for me, so I had no real choice but to start braking from the drops. It wasn't particularly easy for me to get used to that, and was a source of a lot of my descending issues. This was also back when the Shimano pads were still on my brakes, so I was not a happy descender.

The switch to the Kool Stop pads and the astonishing (for me) discovery that I could easily get way down into the drops and brake/descend well from there happened almost simultaneously.

Although I'm pretty sure were it not for the confidence boost the Kool Stop pads gave me, the rest wouldn't have happened.