Shayne

I've had our Co-Motion Primera for 3 yrs. now. We have 2500 miles on it and up until tonight, I've only had my daughter on the back stoking. She was 7 when we got it, now 10 and weighs in at 70 lbs. We've had a ton of fun, rode several week long tours, raced in about 20 TT's and even won champions jerseys. She is now tall enough that I was able to remove the crank shorteners. This now opens up the back seat to adult stokers.

Tonight I bolted on my first adult stoker for our local Thursday night world championship group ride. Em is a local cat 2 female who weighs about 125-130 lbs. She's young, mid 20's and grew up riding on the back of a tandem with her father. She's been tearing up the local race seen in S.W. Ohio this year with about 8 wins. She's even doing well in the bigger regional races with some podiums. I'm a cat 4 with good chance at a top 10 or better in any race I do. I've earned some upgrade points this year and hope to go to cat 3 this summer. Also at this group ride was my cat 2 teammate with his tandem. He had a cat 3 female teammate of Em's. The girls kind of started this whole tandem wars thing.

I was willing to give it a go as long as it was understood, that safety came first. There were about 30 singles with us and I couldn't stop or accelerate as quickly as they could. Believe me, Em liked my careful attitude and I was pretending I had my kid sister on the back. Precious cargo.

Off we go. Our strength matches up pretty well, with me being a little stronger and faster than she. The other tandem had a huge power imbalance toward the captain. At first I just stayed a few meters off the back as I had trouble handling the surges. We just couldn't get the switch working right, going from power to coasting and I didn't want to run up on a wheel. Couldn't really talk because of the wind noise. The pace at that point was only about 25-26 so no biggie, we were just cruising along. Coming into a longish false flat going down, Em wanted to get in a dig. So we go to the front and hit it. Wow, we just stuck it on 36-37 and held it for a very long pull. Then the other tandem comes off our wheel and pulls most of the group on past to the stop sign. What a blast.

We get to the first climb and Em wanted to try and have us both stand. We're near the back and the other tandem is near the front. We got up and it just worked. I don't know how, but we just had the perfect cadence and the bike was rocking back and forth, but in control. We weren't the first to the top, but we passed quite a few. And we went blowing by the other tandem. At the top, it's 2 miles to the sprint sign, we put it in TT mode, passed everyone and no one could come around us for the sign. That felt good. The rest of the night would not quite go as well, we cooked ourselves on the first few efforts, but we never got dropped. Even at the end we did the leadout and held 34. The other tandem won the war, but we scared them early on. As the night wore on, we got better with keeping our pedaling in sink. Going from power to coasting got smoother.

All in all we got in 44 miles and about 4 good climbs. Avg. was 21 mph, not the fastest night, but not slow either. We stayed cautious and safe, yet still had a blast. We'll do it again and we're going to do a TT also. My daughter thought it was super cool as she looks up to Em. My wife likes Em a lot too. Em's a great kid.

I was excited about the ride, so I thought I'd share.

pathdoc

Avg of 21 sounds pretty darn good to me.

mkane77g

Wanna race

Shayne

We do have a crit up here that has a tandem class. hmmm

Red Rider

Wow! We have no crits w/tandem categories. Dang!

We time-trial our tandem and then generally have fun on it. You took fun to a whole new level. I'll look at what you've posted after tomorrow's tandem century.

R900

Nice, I once road briefly with my Dad, it was amazing the power compared to my wife. Congrats on your soon to be CAT 3 status!