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Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 1,009
Bikes: SOMA Grand Randonneur, Gunnar Sport converted to 650B, Rivendell Rambouillet, '82 Trek 728, '84 Trek 610, '85 Trek 500, C'Dale F600, Burley Duet, Lotus Legend
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You're overlooking the fact that her lack of desire to ride harder is a training opportunity for you. Suppose she's generating 120 watts of power, you're doing whatever you're doing and riding at 15mph average. You want to go faster? She doesn't have to generate any more power. Just work harder yourself.
After nearly a year of riding on the tandem with my wife, she's gotten much more powerful and much more endurance -- we rode a Super Randonneur series together, with the final ride being 380 miles with about 23,000 feet of climbing. So she's doing fabulously, but she's still in her first year of randonneuring, while I'm in my fifth, and it's going to take a little while longer still before she catches up.
But the training benefit of riding with a stoker whose strength to weight ratio is somewhat lower than mine is that my strength and endurance has increased well above what I've ever been able to achieve training on my single.
Nick