We rode in a couple of large European cyclosportifs on the tandem this summer. In one of them, we spent the first hour leading a group of about 30 riders, with no-one else really doing any work. Later on, we spent a couple of hours in a peloton of 200+ riders that was averaging about 40 kph (25 mph). It was intense! The previous year, I'd done the same ride and ended up in a similar situation on my single bike (but not going quite as fast). Being on the tandem was a very different experience.
It was a pretty flat course, so the difference in momentum between the tandem and the singles wasn't really a problem. However, there was a lot of movement in the pack, and a lot of things to navigate around when blasting through some of the towns and villages. Fortunately, we had up to three motorbikes escorting our group and clearing/warning the traffic ahead. It required a huge amount of attention and cognitive energy, and I could barely take a hand off of the bars to grab a mouthful of water or energy bar. It required every bit of my skill as a tandem pilot, and my stoker commended me on the job I'd done at the end of it - not for the physical effort, but for the piloting skill.
For a while, we tried to escape the madness by getting onto or near the front of the group during the most hectic section of the course (going through downtown Geneva), but after 10 km or so of that my stoker said that she was going to blow up if we kept riding that hard, and that we had to drop back into the shelter of the pack. The group was actually being lead most of the time by two fit guys riding another tandem. In the middle of the group, we found a third tandem, and so I tried to stick behind them for a while, but their back wheel was just as popular as ours and other people kept taking it instead.
Towards the end of the ride, the group was going harder and harder up every small incline. After we'd been dropped a couple of times and fought hard to get back on, we finally had to let them go. I breathed a sigh of relief at that time because I knew that I could mentally relax then, even though physically I had to keep working as hard.
It was an experience that I'll never forget, and we had a great time. For me, my main impression was of never being so mentally exhausted at the end of a ride as I was at the end of that one. But, I've also never been able to ride so fast - we averaged over 38 kph (24 mph) for the 175 km (110 miles) course, in a time of just over 4 and a half hours!
Last edited by Chris_W; 09-21-09 at 03:38 PM.