Originally Posted by
Rowan
Yes, those cramps can be nasty, although the worst I've had was on a single on what I thought was going to be an OK populaire type of ride. How was your rehydration rate, and did you have anything like Enduralytes?
One of the major issues when climbing a lot like that on a tandem is that because I am controlling the bike, I am concentrating on keeping a line at low speed and really, there isn't any opportunity to grab the bottle and drink enough. To an extent, that means planning ahead and getting as much fluid in as possible. But it doesn't always work that way.
Having heart rate monitors helps because we can moderate and syncrhonise our efforts, although we don't wear the HRMs as often as we should.
Hydration was "ok", but even with side-loader WB cages it was hard to drink on the longish climb at 50 miles, a 45 minute effort I would think. At a recent event with an 8 mile climb we used our Camelbaks just to improve hydration, but I didn't anticipate how tired (translation = slow) we would be on the 3.5 mile climb, nor did I anticipate the temps: not bad mind you, but warmer than expected.
I have used at times Nuun tablets and Enduralytes with some success and might start using them again. Interestingly, the muscles that start to cramp are the inner thigh muscles which are picking up the slack when the larger muscles in the quad are beat up; still, I would have been fine without the darn steep pitches to the lunch stop
I use a HRM and was pleased with the effort I was able to sustain. I ask my stoker to give what she's got and I can hear her breathing in my headset so no loafing going on back there; if it's a short, steep pitch I'll let her know to crank it up a bit. I'm going to be doing a lot more climbing this summer on my single so I believe our tandem climbing will improve further.
It's all good whether it hurts or not although I do sometimes wonder about the value of character building at my advanced age.