Bike Forums - the joy of pulling

Quote:

Originally Posted by rsbob (Post 23648095)

When I had a tandem, and it was a good male friend and me, since we were the fastest, all we did was pull. On the Seattle to Portland one day ride, we pulled trains of up to 15 people, which was never reciprocated. On RAMROD, we would pull people for miles on the flats just to have them pass us when we started climbing, because tandems are not fast climbers - only descenders. Then we would descend so fast, no matter how hard they tried, the could not catch our wheel.

With my wife as stoker, all she wanted to do was catch and pass people, which we did a lot. No pulling since I was not doing group rides then.

Yeah, one can't pull a tandem. We've proven that quite a few times. We just don't roll like a single. "Tandems are not fast climbers" depends on the tandem. We had one in our group which won its age group Nationals. And good for you for riding RAMROD! We rode it also. My stoker said, "Never again!" We still ride our tandem, never were fast, and are even slower now.