Come to think of it my wife and I have different preferences for coasting. For both of us it's unconscious, but if I prefer to coast level, she prefers to coast with one foot down. It may be that I prefer to coast non-level...

From '77 to '87 we rode upright tandems, 90 degrees OOP. I outweighed my stoker by 30-40 lbs so she would get on the saddle while I held her up before we started.

From '88 to '07 we rode mostly recumbent with her trailing me by 45 degrees.

In '07 we got another upright, but now she outweighs me by about 30 lbs (team weight's about the same) and my shoulders & hands aren't what they used to be. So we've been riding IP to simplify starts and stops.

Any suggestions for starting off in OOP when both riders have one foot on the ground?

Interesting question. You have a choice as to who gets to start with an almost complete stroke and who starts with a bit less than half a stroke. Starting OOP has that different feel to begin with, but you've been through that.

One thought: when I ride with my son on the back (he's bigger and stronger than I, but not so much bigger he can't go on the back, so this is the preferred configuration), I am holding the bike more by either leaning the top tube (ever so slightly) against one leg, or by practically sitting on the top tube. So it's not the arms and shoulders that are steadying the bike. It needs to be slightly tilted and pressing against the on-ground leg when I start up, and then in the single motion that gets my seat onto the saddle and the high pedal to the low position we get going. This motion is brief and it is during that motion that we have the initial acceleration that is adequate to transition from holding the bike up to its balancing on its own. The arms/hands are only needed to hold the brakes when stopped. But I haven't tried OOP with my son yet (he's away at school).

My wife and I talked about OOP, and concluded we didn't think it would work well for us. But I'd be interested to hear input from the OOP experts.

We do quite a bit of out-of-saddle climbing, not infrequently in our lowest gear (24 [chainring] x34 [cog]) on grades of 15 to 20 percent (we live in the DC area so a lot of our riding is in the "scenic" territory arround and over the ridges of the Appalachians). I outweigh her by about 80 pounds, and our tandem can weigh 75 to 90 pounds when fully-loaded with gear for a 600Km ride with night riding and in uncertain weather conditions (we are randonneurs).

As we understand it, the whole "plus" of OOP is that by having our legs out of phase, one person's leg will be in the "power on" part of the stroke while the other person's leg is in the "dead zone" in the back of the stroke.

But doesn't that mean that during the spot when my legs are in the dead zone, that she'll be bearing a disproportionate amount of the team's weight? So if the team weighs 400 pounds with tandem, and I am powering 2/3 of that in my power stroke but only 1/3 in the dead zone, then won't she get a load surge of 1/3 during the OOP portion where she's in her power stroke but I'm in my dead zone? That seems like it is just asking for injuries.

In phase, we both are going through the dead zone together, so on those super-steep pitches it takes some skill to keep the tandem steady and moving forward somewhat smoothly. But that seems better than having big load surges that might cause injury.

Thanks for any comments,

Nick Bull

We are usually not as strong, especially climbing, as the teams that we ride with, so we have to stand on the steeper parts of hills where we would normally get bogged down. We are definitely getting better, but I can't see us standing with OOP, which we rode for years prior to the CoMotion.

FRank and Terry

We started in phase and then gave OOP a try. We liked it and stayed that way for several years (gave stoker a sense of her own power contribution), until we got our new bike and gave in phase a try again. Been in phase for past year and half with no interest in another OOP trial. Bike seems a little easier to control in phase, although a techinically correct "spinning circles" pedal technique seems to minimize this - power application is ideally fairly constant all around each pedal stroke.