The Tandem Experiment

Okay, so we've seriously considered riding a tandem. Before actually riding one there were a few things we figured would be nice on a tandem.

1. We liked the idea of going at the same pace. We actually already ride very similar paces on separate bikes, but of course on one bike the pace is... exactly equal.
2. We also figured that already having a similar overall pace we wouldn't have too much trouble acclimating to the world of riding a tandem.
3. And finally, we hoped that perfect drafting on a tandem would significantly boost our overall speed since we don't draft at all (for various reasons) when riding together on separate bikes.

Those were our pre-conceived ideas. What happened when those ideas were hit by the reality of actually riding a tandem together?

The Parking Lot Cruise

Tandem Ride No. 1 Parking Lot Cruise

Our first tandem ride was a few quick spins around the parking lot of a bike shop in Bend, Oregon. It was enough to pique our interest. It was also a very light bike, a Robusta made by Co-Motion. It didn't seem all that much heavier than my solo bike. We rode it for probably 10 or 20 minutes, some of which was just to get things adjusted, like seat height. And with platform pedals and simply riding it around the parking lot we weren't really doing anything other than just learning the very basics of riding a tandem together. But it was fun, and as already mentioned, it definitely piqued our interest.

An Actual Ride
Our second ride was several days later on a borrowed tandem, an aluminum Cannondale owned by Mike Ward, Amy's spin class instructor. This bike is noticeably heavier than the Robusta, but not dramatically so. For our first ride on it he set it up with his mountain bike pedals which have platforms on one side and cleat locks on the other. We didn't even bring our bike shoes, not wanting to deal with being locked into the pedals when there are several other things we need to learn: this is all very new to us.

Tandem Ride No. 2 Vancouver Lake OB Ride Distance: 17.35 miles Elevation Gain: ~250 feet Average Moving Speed: ?? mph

So we were off. We rode from Mike's house, and Mike went with us on his bike. We decided we wanted to ride on the flats down by Vancouver Lake, and hopefully we'd have enough experience by the time we got back that going up the grade on Lakeshore (or maybe even the much steeper Fruit Valley Road where we have done hill repeats lately) would be a piece of cake. I immediately didn't like the platform pedals. Riding in front I was focused on several new things about riding a tandem, most of which involved me telling Amy what I'm doing before I do it. All that to say that I wasn't always pedaling as hard as I could have been, distracted with those other things. But with Amy pedaling hard I found that sometimes my foot would simply slip right off the pedal. It was very frustrating. Once I figured out that I just needed to pedal harder, along with getting used to just riding and not over thinking, the problem mostly went away. But it was also frustrating because this basically had nothing to do with riding a tandem and everything to do with riding platform pedals.
It also wasn't long before I noticed my triceps were getting tired. The bike, or perhaps more accurately, the handlebar stem, is a bit long for my body. Plus, my wrists were starting to feel it. Strike that. My wrists and hands were starting to go numb, the opposite of feeling it. I knew I liked my aero bars, but there is nothing like riding without them to really appreciate them. These comfort issues were the reasons I wanted to turn around at Vancouver Lake and not continue out to Frenchman's Bar.

On the way back Mike told us to let her rip at one point and see if we could get it up to 30 mph on the flats. We both started cranking and were able to hit 29 mph but not quite 30 mph. It was kind of fun. Not sure how to compare it to riding solo as I've never really attempted a max speed on the flats, but I'm not sure either of us could reach 29 mph riding solo.

We did fine riding up Lakeshore, which is a minor uphill grade of 3 or maybe 4%. I had been a tad concerned about it as the shoulder isn't all that wide. But it is actually pretty easy to ride a straight line on a tandem.

On the last stretch before turning off for Mike's house we came up on a little valley. Mike was ahead of us as we were still getting up to speed after a stop sign. Amy said to crank it up both to catch up to Mike and also so we wouldn't have to pedal up the other side. So I did. The next thing I know the pedaling seems oddly difficult. I hear some noises behind me. We reach the uphill part and it is now really hard. Turns out Amy's feet slipped off the pedals almost immediately. She tried to tell me about it as it happened, but through the process of attempting to put them back on, and realizing it was impossible, then sitting there with her legs sticking out to avoid getting thwacked by the pedals, she was laughing so hard she couldn't talk. Needless to say we did not catch up to Mike on that little hill.

It was an interesting ride. Oh, and I completely forgot to use RunKeeper on my phone, plus I didn't know how to run Mike's tandem bike computer, so I have no idea how long it took or our average speed. I punched in the route to Trimble when we got home and determined it was 17.35 miles.

Pedals Locked and Loaded

Tandem Ride No. 3 Past Frenchman OB Ride Distance: 32.0 miles Elevation Gain: ~700 feet Average Moving Speed: 17.45 mph

Mike was kind enough to let us take the tandem home and try it out a few more times, even encouraging us to make further adjustments as needed for comfort. So we did. Mike took off the front wheel and it fit in the back of the van no problem (yet another major question answered!). Clearly we needed to put our own pedals on it, and I needed to somehow get the handlebars closer to my body. I have a nice short high-angle stem on my bike, but I didn't want to mess around with removing and installing stems multiple times. So I decided to simply rotate the tandem's handlebars up and back some. It wouldn't be ideal, but it would both raise the hoods and also put them a little closer to me while riding, both of which were highly desirable. I thought about installing my aero bars, but that would involve far more trouble than the stem, as the tape and bike computer would both need to be relocated. And it isn't my bike, afterall.

Wednesday morning came and we headed out again. It had been raining, but Mike's tandem has fenders, so we weren't concerned about wet road grime. I had also found the user manual on-line for the bike computer on the tandem, a Shimano Flight Deck SC-6502, and could now use it properly. One of the really cool things about this bike computer is that it shows you what gears you are in. That is really handy on a tandem. On a solo bike it is no big deal to simply look down and see which front chain ring or rear cassette gear your chain is on. But on a tandem those are quite a ways behind the captain, so it is very convenient to have it right there on display.

This ride seemed oddly more difficult than Monday's ride. We were clipped in and all was fine, but it just seemed like we couldn't go as fast as we had before. We thought maybe in spite of the obvious lack of wind evidence perhaps it was a headwind issue and would resolve itself when we turned around at the halfway point. But nope, it wasn't the wind. In retrospect I think I was hoping for too much. There is no free lunch. If you want to go fast you have to pedal hard, even on a tandem. Yes, there is some energy conserved with the second person drafting as perfectly as can be done, but that doesn't mean it will be easy to go fast.

The other issue that was starting to become problematic is our different ideal riding cadences. I have intentionally increased my pedaling rpm's from an average in the 70s in 2009, to around 80 rpm in 2010, and this year I like 90 rpm, and even higher (up to 110) for short bursts. Amy, on the other hand, is much more at home in the 60s and 70s. This is no small issue. If we go to only one of our ideal cadences the other is completely out of sorts. So I did my best to compromise, ensuring neither of us was completely miserable, though not exactly happy either.

Part of the reason I like the higher cadence is because it forces me to have a much higher quality, or smoother, pedal stroke. At lower cadences I resort to simply mashing on the pedals, using my quads almost exclusively. At 90 rpm and above I use more of the whole pedal stroke (lest I bounce out of the saddle) and therefore more of my muscle groups. Occasionally I would let our cadence get well into the 90s or higher and I would notice a certain someone would start to bounce around back there, and there would be moaning and gnashing of teeth. Or pokes in the bottom.

We decided to climb up Fruit to get home. It was definitely harder than riding solo. I had the cadence a bit high, but I was relying fairly heavily on the cadence indicated by the bike computer and not as much as I should have been simply by feel. I think the cadence displayed on the bike computer is wrong in the lower gears (it displays cadence by knowing what gear, therefore cadence is calculated on the fly based on the gear ratio combined with speed). Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Now that I'm sitting here writing this blog after the fact, it is clear that we rode this route significantly faster than when riding separate bikes, over 1 mph average moving speed faster, even with all the "issues" already described. So we probably shouldn't have been as disappointed as we were. But, we are human, and when your expectations are higher than reality it will generally be disappointing.

Time For Some Hills
So we decided to see how it would go on our Throbbing Thigh Thriller route. We looked up our fastest times, and I had done it solo at 16.8 mph average moving speed. The only problem was, even just a few miles into the ride we were both feeling it in our legs, and also weren't all that comfortable, so we decided to shorten the ride to around 30 miles instead of the whole 40 miles and 3200 feet of gain.

Tandem Ride No. 4 Carty/199th OB Ride Distance: 30.42 miles Elevation Gain: ~2400 feet Average Moving Speed: 16.11 mph

I was finally getting into the groove of calling out shifting a couple seconds before doing it, and things are definitely going smoother. We had dropped the chain more than once this week on the tandem, including within the first half mile of this ride. And while part of the issue is that we're riding a tandem, the other part is that it simply isn't my bike. I'm not used to it. So it was nice to start getting some of this stuff figured out.

One thing Amy noticed was that we can crush it on rollers. A long stretch of the route, heading west on 199th Street (just west of I-5) is full of little rolling hills. I love this section when riding solo as I can leverage my weight down one hill into momentum going up the next hill, and so on. It was even more so on the tandem, and Amy got to be a part of it this time. Fun stuff.

We didn't have all that high of a moving speed (16.1 mph) when compared to my all time best (16.8 mph). But considering the fact that we usually ride the TTT in the 15s (or even 14s) I would say 16.1 mph is pretty good. Of course we didn't ride the whole route, so that could be a significant apples to oranges issue, but it isn't really relevant anyway.

The bottom line is that we both miss riding our own bikes. I'm sure a big part of it is that our bikes are dialed in for comfort, and that would come were we to get our own tandem. But it most assuredly isn't only that. There is a certain amount of freedom and lack of responsibility when riding your own bike. Riding a tandem is fun, but requires extra from the captain: more communication, more responsibility. And takes some freedom away from both riders, particularly from the stoker. The stoker is at the mercy of the captain's choices: steering and shifting being the obvious big ones. I'm sure the extent of braking can come into play sometimes, like on a particularly steep downhill, though I never heard any complaints in that department.

So we have decided to hold off on the whole idea of a tandem for now. Maybe someday it will tickle our fancy again. But in the here and now we are happy to stick with the status quo.

How did those pre-conceived ideas fare?

1. Going the same pace: our similar pace on separate bikes is good enough! We are actually blessed to have similar riding paces, so why mess with a good thing?
2. Easy tandem acclimation: there is definitely a learning curve, but it isn't too tough to get the hang of it. The different riding styles (i.e. cadences) ended up being the most difficult issue for us. Not really a deal breaker, but definitely an issue to overcome, were we to stick with it.
3. Significant boost to our overall speed: I guess it depends how you define "significant". We did ride faster on the tandem, without a doubt. And the speed would likely only increase with familiarity. But warp speed is apparently not enough of a carrot to keep us interested. For now.

It was definitely a good experience. We know a little bit more about each other, and we also now have more than just the idea of riding a tandem, we've actually got some experience doing it. Might come in handy... but for now it is tucked away for future reference.