stapfam

It is not the hills that are our problem, it is the lack of length of them. If you want to know our highest speed it is 52.8 mph on the road, and 53.8 offroad. Yes the Tandem is faster off road than on road !!! Thing about speed is not the speed itself, but the sudden deceleration when you hit something. Last Autumn we had a front tyre blowout at 35mph on the Tandem and within yards we were bouncing down the track. My pilot lost his nerve after that and took it steady down all the hills, but part of that going steady was also the slippery nature of the trail this winter. That was until tonight. My Copilot on the Tandem has got his nerve back and this was evident by the speed everywhere, and the number of front wheel slides we had going downhill. Then the Final bit of Down hill road with 100yards between hairpins. I knew it was going to happen, but speed went up and we hit 30mph through one hairpin that has a suggested speed of 15mph for cars. Thank goodness he has his confidence back because we also lost the back end in a slide on that corner, but he did not panic and steered himself out of that slide and straight into another. Still did the last haipin at speed but as the road was clear we did use a bit more road than usual.

Speed is not a problem, but I can understand those that err on the cautious side. You normally find that the fast downhillers are the ones that are very slow or steady up hill, mainly because they know their weaknesses and make up ground on their strong points