Originally Posted by JanMM
RR will be lobbying for a cyclometer on the stoker bars soon.
My stoker and I failed on the steepest hill of the the Hilly Hundred (Southern Indiana) two years in a row. Downsizing the chainrings and getting a cassette with a lower low and , oh, yeah, training a little harder on our local puny hills, helped us conquer it last Fall.
Problem with all tandems is getting the gearing right for the hills and still have a high enough gear for the road. We have a compromise with 48/36/24 on the crank and is just about low enough for our offroad hills and just high enough to get a sensible speed on the road. cadence of 100 in 48/11 is 30 mph and any faster than that and we would be coasting (Although we did achieve 45mph on the flat once and I never want to spin that high again.) We have an 11/32 rear cassette- and a 34t is made- but we bend it. So our lowest gear is 24/11 and we can handle the 15%ers for 1 mile- but cadence drops to 80ish by the 10th one.
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How long was I in the army? Five foot seven.
Spike Milligan