For the long-winded version, you can visit this previous posting:
http://www.bikeforums.net/showpost.p...7&postcount=11

You're on the right track as it's all about teamwork.

Riding rollers may make you smoother but unless you can retain that smooth form on the climbs and agree on technique, it won't yield the desired results. Therefore, IMHO, you'd be better off practicing your climbing technique on real climbs.

You need to agree on the technique beforehand and you may need to try several different techniques to see which works best for your team (and tandem; see below). If you both favor climbing out of the saddle but one of you is a bike thrower and the other isn't, you're definitely loosing efficiency. Same thing goes for cadence; if one of you is a spinner (high cadence, a la Armstrong) and the other is a pedal masher (low cadence, a la Ulrich), then you've got another area where you're working against one another. So, my suggestion would be to find a fairly challenging climb in your local area, establish your baseline for time/speed to climb as you are today and then try tackling the hill on successive rides with a different and agreed upon technique, e.g., seated & maintaining 80 RPM, seated and maintaining 90 RPM, standing & maintaining 70 RPM with no side-to-side movement, standing & maintaining 70 RPM with moderate side-to-side movement. Just find your rhythm using one particular method and then work on optimizing it.

As for frame flex, you'll forgive me for asking, do you know how many tandems Guru has built and/or who they consulted with on their material selection & design? What type of tubing did they use, what type of frame design does it have, and how much steering trail does it have?

The 130mm rear spacing makes me suspect about overall frame stiffness and geometry as that's pretty narrow, even for a race-specific tandem. Don't get me wrong, we know a few teams who ride 135mm rear spaced tandems and I know of a few 130mm tandems, but they must be ridden "cleanly" with minimal side-to-side movement during climbs or sprints otherwise you'll tend to induce a lot of rear wheel flex. Same goes for the frame stiffness and steering. For the frame, super-light is OK so long as the right type/size tubing is used, e.g., thin-gauge, air-hardened steel, 6000 or 7000 series aluminum, Calfee's carbon bikes, or some of the Ti models with oversized or ovalized down, internal, boom & top tubes as well as some super-beefy rear stays. On the geometry, while I'm a big fan of long-steering trail on tandems, if you get it too long or throw the bike when climbing it will make the front end serpentine as you climb, which also sucks up energy. Just some things to consider as the bike's design may need to be taken into consideration as you work on your climbing techniques. You can throw a super stiff short trail tandem with normal (145mm) or wide (160mm) rear drop-outs around all you want, but a narrow wheel and long steering trail bike would climb more efficiently with zero side-to-side movement, standing or seated.


As for racing wheels, I'd check with the folks in your local area who race tandems or consider subscribing and floating a question to the folks who belong to the Atlantic Seaboard Tandem Racing Org. (ASTRO) list at Yahoo: http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/tandemracing/

These are the folks who can best tell you what wheels work well for which events based on lots of 1st hand experience. Frankly, I've seen just about everything you can imagine, some have faired better than others.