Tandem Tales
Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 5:07 pm
Now whilst this Topic is intended to be mostly about my races with John, I will encourage others involved with tandems to post here for any discussion.
I fully intend to continue to post my race reports and footage each week.
There are a few tandems racing around the place, but mostly by people who intend to race at a high level. John and I are not planning to go to Rio, we are both in our forties, I weigh 105kg and he weighs 95kg so with 18kg of bike we are well attached to the ground, hence the name. We are just enjoying our racing at our own modest level. There are other tandems who also ride with the ACT Veteran's Cycling Club, sometimes with a bit of mix and match between stokers and pilots and all the stokers to date have been Vision Impaired.
Whilst it is best to have regular partnerships, it is sometimes just too hard to get the same two people together at the same time and place. This is why it is always necessary for stokers to be able to ride with a number of different pilots if they want to get out each week.
John bought his own bike this year and he rides it during the week with one regular pilot and occasional rides with another. I'm his race pilot and on the weekend it is necessary to change the pedals and the saddle height for me as well as to put the race wheels on which requires a front brake adjustment for different rim widths. This all is a pain, but when we were borrowing a bike from FitAbility we had to adjust both positions.
His bike build was a bit of a saga which I might document, and if I take some photos of it I'll post them here too. The wheels were a bit of fun as well.
In the meantime the next post will be the story from last weekend.
Cheers,
Cameron
I fully intend to continue to post my race reports and footage each week.
There are a few tandems racing around the place, but mostly by people who intend to race at a high level. John and I are not planning to go to Rio, we are both in our forties, I weigh 105kg and he weighs 95kg so with 18kg of bike we are well attached to the ground, hence the name. We are just enjoying our racing at our own modest level. There are other tandems who also ride with the ACT Veteran's Cycling Club, sometimes with a bit of mix and match between stokers and pilots and all the stokers to date have been Vision Impaired.
Whilst it is best to have regular partnerships, it is sometimes just too hard to get the same two people together at the same time and place. This is why it is always necessary for stokers to be able to ride with a number of different pilots if they want to get out each week.
John bought his own bike this year and he rides it during the week with one regular pilot and occasional rides with another. I'm his race pilot and on the weekend it is necessary to change the pedals and the saddle height for me as well as to put the race wheels on which requires a front brake adjustment for different rim widths. This all is a pain, but when we were borrowing a bike from FitAbility we had to adjust both positions.
His bike build was a bit of a saga which I might document, and if I take some photos of it I'll post them here too. The wheels were a bit of fun as well.
In the meantime the next post will be the story from last weekend.
Cheers,
Cameron