I ride offroad and all the times, averages, speed heart rates do not apply to the rest of you, but the actual riding does. I have a regular pilot, even though I own the Tandem, I pay the bills and I maintain the damn thing.
Point is
Pilot age 41, weight 180lbs, height 6'2" Fit, max Hr =185 but this can be exceeded
Stoker age 58, weight 150lbs Height 5'6", Still fit but not as strong as the pilot, max hr of 165 and this is exceeded
Stuart gets the fun seat because he can control the bike (Stronger shoulders) and the Tandem is better balanced with him up front. I have become an accomplished stoker but you do not just sit there and pedal. A stoker still has to think and work whilst riding.
Downhill- on or offroad is not a problem, and the only complaint is that Stuart gets a sore back from me thumping him if he is not going fast enough. On the flat, and that includes the slight rises that occur on any flat run is no problem as once the Tandem has momentum , just turning the pedalswith a little bit of power will lose any solo that tries to stay with you, without the HR getting any higher than 80%.
Uphills we are slow, or at least we think we are. Most of our riding is done offroad, with 1mile long rutted paths at 8 to 10% gradient. Some hills are shorter and the basket one is 650 ft climb in 1000yds with a steep bit just at the end. It is steep. We think we are slow because we cannot stay with the fit Solos. We start at the bottom of the hill in granny, and just come down on gearing and down and down and when we run out of gears we slow down. Or we used to. Now we still start in granny, but take our HR down by 5 to normal. We keep up a good pace but being down just a bit on HR means that where the hill steepens, we have the energy to put in a little more effort so we do not have to change down, when we are over the steep bit we find that our cadence will rise, and we can change up a gear to get the cadence down. We get over the steep bit by keeping the momentum up. If we just put in the same power on the pedals for the steep bit- we slow down and lose momentum.
On the heart rate, we try to keep at 80% of our max but obviously as the hill progresses, we get higher, normally around 90% but towards the end we will be hitting 100" and even getting 110% on occasions for that last bit.
This has not come overnight, we have been riding together for 4 years, so know each other fairly well, but more importantly- we are both caring riders. We do think of each other, and our main topics of conversation is "hows the HR going, hows the legs, and lets stop cos I want to stretch my legs."
I have another co-rider that is a night mare to ride on the Tandem with. He is competitive and puts in more power than I want to do. We did a ride recently, only 35 miles off road and he bonked after 10 miles. He had put in so much effort, as I am a lot older and he has to carry me because he is younger and fitter, that he completely ran out of body resources. That last 25 miles with me carrying him was hard work.
Tandem riding is a TEAM event and the team will not come overnight. It took me and Stuart 3 months before we actually started working with the Tandem, and I include the bike in that team. At three months the Tandem stopped throwing us to the ground for no reason, It actually agreed to change gear when we asked it to, instead of making us go up the steep hils in middle ring, and it also suddenly became easier to ride.
Only 3 rides so far- sorry but you have a few more miles to go before you stop having problems. Give it 3 months or so and let us know how easy it is to ride then.