Hermes

Each year the Berkeley Bicycle Club holds a sanctioned team time trial open to 150 teams with different categories. On 3/25/07, my wife and I competed in the tandem category.

Our team, Alto Velo/Webcor Racing, did very well in the event taking several wins and places.

Tandem Category
No. of Teams: 6
Place: 5th
Official Time: 54:45.
Results: https://berkeleybike.org/events/bbctt...sults.html#top

The winning tandem time was 44:58. The team (man / woman) that posted this time won the Berkeley TTT tandem category last year. Most of the tandem competitors have raced this event before.

This was our first race in many years after restarting our cycling in May 2006. We did some practice time trials run by. Alto Velo, and we rode the TT course last weekend.

I may regret this but below is a pic of us ~ halfway through the TT. OCP / Suggestions welcome. With Botto on the other side, I feel somewhat safer posting a pic. However, I miss his wit and pithy one liners.



Photo: https://mikenachtwey.com/

The course is a 16.6 mile loop with 1600 feet of climbing finishing ~400 feet higher in elevation than it starts with three major climbs called the three bears; Mama Bear, Papa Bear and Baby Bear. Papa Bear is a 1.1 mile 8 - 9% grade that comes at the finish. The course is not technically difficult but one must manage very fast descents finishing in right hand turns. I used Waterrockets countersteering technique and it worked really well with the tandem. Our plan was to start out at below race pace and build up power and heart rate over the course putting out maximum power and HR on the largest hill at the end. Our warm-up was the ride from the parking lot uphill a couple of miles to the start. So how did that all work out?

We got to the start faster than we thought and had to wait a few minutes and cooled down. We did not have an adequate warm-up. Our start was okay but not great. We took off and set our HRs as planned - so far so good. There was a moderate headwind but I was on the aerobars - no big deal. After about three miles, we were passed by a strong two-man Red Army tandem team – we thought we might catch them on the hills – no way! I met these guys at the start and I knew they would be strong. My wife advised me that a second team was approaching. Yikes, they overtook us on the fist hill and over time pulled away. Since there were no other teams behind us after the Red Army and this one that just passed, the situation was not pretty. We stuck with our plan taking the power/HR up – we had to catch somebody. As we started a climb, we saw the tandem that started ahead of us. We passed that tandem at the crest of the climb. After a high speed descent, the climb up Papa Bear was tough but we finished strong. We felt way too good at the finish line. Reflecting on the race, we descended the hills at max speed executed the right hand turns reasonably well. We may have conserved too much energy at the beginning and middle of the race saving it for the larger hills and we had a poor warm-up thereby leaving a few minutes on the table. However, we executed our plan, were very pleased with the result, met some interesting people and had a lot of fun. My wife did a great job as stoker and as usual really hammered the hills.

DiabloScott

90° out of phase? Your wife must be a strong pedaller.

That's a fun course, good story.

Hermes

Yes, she is very strong, former marathon runner turned avid cyclist and a great climber.

merlinextraligh

You already know this from your post, but you need to warm up hard for a TT. You need to do a few maximal efforts before you start. The warm up routine my coach gave me is:

15minute easy to moderate;
5 minute tempo;
5Minute recovery;
5 minute tempo;
5 minute recovery;
3 minute steady state, builiding to a full out effort in the last minute;
3 minute recovery;
3 minute steady state, builiding to a full out effort in the last minute;
5 minute easy.
Race.

Second comment, probably doesn't matter much on a tandem sitting behind your draft, but your stoker could be a little lower, flatter back. Just some more elbow bend would accomplish that.

Hermes

Thanks MerlinXL. This pic was great because it shows the position of the riders. I thought the same as you that stoker position does not make a lot of aero difference so I told her to concentrate on max power versus aero position. She agrees that we should lower her bar and bring her closer to me. The bar telescopes as well as raises and lowers. I am going to bring our cycleops trainer to the next race, warm up at the car and then race. We were too cavalier about warm-up at this TT. We are planning to race at the Nevada / CA state championships in June. This will be a 40K TT and many of the same teams will be there so we get another crack at improving our time relative to the field.

Pizza Man

Thanks for the report, that looks like fun.
I'll have to give it a try sometime.

I don't know much about tandems, but I thought that the front & rear cranks were always alligned. Is the 90 degrees out of phase deliberate?

DiabloScott

Out of phase evens out the torque cycle when you've got two strong riders; makes turns a little more interesting though.

DannoXYZ 

Actually the stoker's aerodynamics is very important. They clean up the air your body pushed aside and rejoins it behind them. Having a long tail like your helmet would help. Meaning if she leaned over more and put her chin on your back, it would give the wind a longer more gradual path to rejoin.

merlinextraligh

Perhaps they should make a special stoker aero helmet with a concave front that matches up to the captain's back!

Hermes

DS is right...turns OOP require attention. On this course, we had power on through the turns such that to lean the bike, I used the countersteering technique. We did not lean the bike far enough to worry about hitting a pedal. Now, if one wanted to lean the bike even more and not pedal, then, for a right hand turn, when my left pedal is down, her cranks are parallel to the ground. Once again, I have to countersteer and shift my weight to force the bike to lean right for a sharp right hand turn at high speed. The biggest problem for OOP is speed bumps. If my cranks are parallel to the ground, one of her pedals is down waiting to hit the bump. Solution...we don't do speed bumps.