Shayne

Haley (8 yrs. old) and I competed in our 2nd TT last Sat. It was a 20k out and back. The course had quite a few rollers and there was a 10-15 mph headwind on the first leg. Of course the tailwind was nice coming back in. The road was older chip-seal so I found myself riding right on the white line as that felt the smoothest.

This race had a class just for tandems with stoker-kids. We had to race against an ex-pro road racer who is was also a multi time track sprint champ. His thighs must have been as big as my waist. We came in at 38:50 for a 19.15 mph avg. We lost by 1:20 but still felt very good about our time. Haley really gave a 110% effort in this race. She said she almost started to cry just before the finish line. The course was really rough on us going out. There were times that we struggled to maintain 16 mph.

All in all we had a good time. I was really proud of Haley and told her so repeatedly. We came home with 2nd place metals and a bottle of high end olive oil. Also got some swag in the way of 2 boxes of fancey hand painted chocolates and 2 bags of pasta. The wife was happy with that.

This Sat. we're racing agian in a 10 miler that is supposed to be pancake flat. That should suit us better. We installed some clip-on aero bars last night and are going out this evening to practice with them and get the position dialed in. They might not help since I won't have much time with them, but they felt pretty good on the trainer last night.

Anyway this is all just for fun so as long as she's happy we'll keep trying. So far we've been training for a tour we're doing in a few weeks and not putting in efforts to help with time trials.

Shayne

waterrockets 

Congrats! Sounds really fun, and 19.15mph is smokin'.

Hermes

Congrats on a great race and time. Haley, I wish my dad would have taken me bicycle racing when I was eight years old. Keep it up.

djembob02

Thanks for the report.

Where are these races located? We have a number of races out this way (Kansas City), but they never have tandem categories. I really want to enter a race with my daughter sometime.

Shayne

This one was in Greenville, Ohio. They hold it the last Sat. of each month. Here's the team site:

https://www.colavitaohiocycling.com/

Just scoll to the bottom and download the flyer.

Later Shayne