Tandem Cycling - Tandems Club on Strava

For those of you who already upload your tandem rides to Strava, consider joining the "Tandems" club that's out there. It has a half-dozen or so members, and it's fun to see where people ride their tandems each week.

Here's a link. (http://app.strava.com/clubs/tandems)

Thanks for the link. I searched for "tandem" and did not find it... I guess "tandems" is the way to find it. We're the ones with the mtb tandem!

Thanks for the link. I searched for "tandem" and did not find it... I guess "tandems" is the way to find it. We're the ones with the mtb tandem!

The thing is, you won't find a club outside your area with the Strava club search feature (http://app.strava.com/clubs). It will only provide clubs close to your location, it will not allow a global search! I understand, however, that this quirk will be soon rectified. If entering tandem as an Athlete Name in Athlete Search (http://app.strava.com/athletes/search), you'll find those Athletes globally that use the word tandem in their name.

You can search using Google by entering tandem site:www.strava.com.

There is also the Tandem Mountain Bikers Club (http://app.strava.com/clubs/tandem-mountain-bikers).

Some tips for tandems:


Using different email address, set up separate (free) accounts for you and your stoker as half-bike riders, and another account as a tandem team.


Tandem teams are naturally gregarious, and it is common for teams to 'Follow' one another based only on being fellow tandems. This works if your account is identified as a tandem team. If you have just a single Athlete account, another tandem team won't know that you are a tandem. It all works out better with the tandem team label out there front and center.


If your Garmin has both single and tandem rides, don't just upload en masse all the rides from your Garmin into your tandem team account, as the half-bike rides will enter too, and these are laborious to remove! Practically, once you start your tandem account, upload only the new rides as you ride them, and these directly après ride. If you wait, you'll forget which ride is which. As The Offspring might say, you've got to keep 'em separated (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jOk8dk-qaU).


You'll need to Log In into the single and tandem accounts using the different email addresses.


The Strava Athlete profile makes no accommodation for tandems. In entering the information for weight you can follow the lead of Kruezotter (http://www.kreuzotter.de/english/espeed.htm), and provide a mean value for the captain and stoker, or enter your total team weight. I don't know which will provide the least aberrant readings.

The choices for 'gender' are Male, Female and Rather not say. This will matter in the King and Queen of the Mountain (KOM, QOM) segment standings, which are a big deal at Strava. If you select Female, there are segments in which a female stoker may have the fastest time, and depose the half-bike riding previous QOM, who may resent the captain's assistance to the new QOM. This is not all bad, because if enough deposed QOM's complain, Strava might become more interested in making tandem accommodations. We just use Rather not say, to avoid any contention.


I double-post the tandem rides in my half-bike Athlete profile, lest my inveterate tandem riding go unnoticed by the single-bike community (this requires uploading the tandem separately for each account). For the single bike account, I specify tandem in the ride title. For a male captain, it works out to have the tandem rides added to the single account, but not for the single rides to be added to the tandem account. For a female stoker, adding the tandem rides to the single account tends to confuse, as her performance will usually be far superior on the tandem.

Ritterview, thanks for the detailed information. This might be interesting enough to make using Strava worthwhile.

Thanks Ritterview. We follow a similar plan. I have one Strava account that has me listed as "Dan/Bevin Orlinski - Tandem" and my other account is just my name. I think many are listing as "(tandem)". I have us listed as male with our combined weight. I kept us listed under the male category as I did not want to have the females getting upset over the Queen of the Mountain stuff... I keep the tandem activity on one account and the solo activity on a separate account.

It certainly is fun when we end up on the first page of a segment of a local mtb climb, being that tandems are slow an all. We don't ride much on the road lately, so we have not been able to see how we measure up against our roadie friends.

I find the Strava a great tool to measure our performance vs. early season - or maybe previous years, but I have yet to load older GPS data than this current year.
It can be addicting chasing your personal records!

We joined the group. Thanks!

We joined, too. Thanks for the detailed info. I'll manually upload our tandem rides later (I keep a record of what bike when I upload to bikejournal.com which is where I keep logs of all our rides / (s)miles. I haven't been that interested in Strava, but this might get me using it.

we are members as "(tandem)" male using our combined weight.
Oh, I know a few stokers who would object to noting the tandem performance as "far superior" than themselves alone. Don't we all go much faster and further on the tandem than alone? At least for our team we climb at the same rate whether on tandem or either of us alone on a single, and certainly our non-climbing speed is far superior than either me or my stoker on singles! So it would skew either of our results if we ever had a single bike account.

So I joined this weekend, what I cannot figure out is how to attach the strava tag to my signature line here in BikeForums?

So I joined this weekend, what I cannot figure out is how to attach the strava tag to my signature line here in BikeForums?

Under Settings at the top of the screen, look for Edit Signature.

Add this url as an image: http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/7564/tandemsstravalogo.jpg

...and this url as a link: http://app.strava.com/clubs/tandems

right, thanks!

So I first joined as my Single profile before I knew better and have now created a new 'Tandem' profile. How do I get my single profile, Darrell Buhler, removed?

So I first joined as my Single profile before I knew better and have now created a new 'Tandem' profile. How do I get my single profile, Darrell Buhler, removed?

Lets just say its taken care of.

I joined, but I'm going to have to "unjoin" and set up a second account. My bad

Fixed. Set up second Strava account.

Lets just say its taken care of.


Many Thanks!!

I'm "in" with two tiny coffee rides loaded. It's strange that I can't find a link to the tandem club on any of my Strava pages. Might I be doing something wrong? My rides do appear on the tandem club page, however.

I'm "in" with two tiny coffee rides loaded. It's strange that I can't find a link to the tandem club on any of my Strava pages. Might I be doing something wrong? My rides do appear on the tandem club page, however.

Typically, the clubs to which a member belongs will appear:


On the Dashboard, in the right column under You're Following, with the heading Clubs.
On the My Profile Page, in the right column on the bottom.
In the Segment view of a ride, in the left Leaderboard column. Under categories such as age, People Your Following, etc. Since the club is 'Tandems' it looks there like Strava has somehow identified all the tandems that have rode that segment, and you'll find out how you did against other tandems. Nope. It is just the members of the Tandem club.