Ludkeh

My wife and I just joined the dark side! We got ourselves a used Co-Motion Java for Christmas. The past few weeks I've been replacing worn components, upgrading to a cassette that will work better in our very hilly countryside and adding new clipless pedals. Today I put it on our trainer and we spent a few hours getting the fit roughly dialed in. We're looking forward to a fun summer on the bike once winter breaks.

We'll both be 65 yo this coming summer. I'm a avid cyclist and ride a Specialized Roubaix. My wife rides a relaxed fitness bike occasionally. But, she REALLY wants to make tandem riding work for us and is the driving force behind the tandem. Needless to say, our riding style and cadences are very different. She's not very comfortable spinning above 75-80 RPM.. I know I need to be very patient and make my tandem riding conform to her comfort level. If she's happy, I'm happy!
I'm wondering, how long it took before you and your stoker became comfortable riding together? Was there a moment when it all came together? You know a ride when you're both in the zone and riding as one! Any advise or recommendations?

waynesulak

Of course it depends on the team, and especially each member's goals and personalities. The more the goals are the same the easier it is to work out the details. My wife was used to working out hard by running and using a stepper at high heart rates so the bike stuff sorted out fairly quickly. She also trusted me to handle the bike more than some stokers trust their captains.

I know others who have to work on goal adjustment and trust a long time before the on the bike stuff like cadence can be worked out.

Welcome and Good luck!

Wayne

DubT

Be very patient! Please take short rides and ask her what she likes. Communicate! Communicate! Did I say communicate. Let her know when you are shifting, let her know when to coast, determine which leg to start coasting on, give her plenty of warning when a bump is coming. Develop a starting and stopping technique that works for you!

It can take time but for us it has been well worth it. Make sure that she is comfortable, the best money that I ever spent on the tandem was getting a professional fit.

It might be good for you to both take a spinning class at the local gym.

By all means make it fun. My wife loves to ride the tandem but we do not "train", we ride, sometimes very hard and sometimes very easy, but for her it must be fun.

Our combined age is 139 and we try to ride every day that it is above 35 degrees outside and when it is colder we ride indoors on the Computrainer.

mwandaw

Rule #1 The stoker is always right!
Rule #2 See rule #1

Wherever your marriage is headed, you'll get there faster on a tandem.

The above are old tandem slogans because they're true! However, to answer your questions, we have been riding together for about 15 years. After several on-the-road rides we were both having a good time, and it has only gotten better. However, I do have to say that it is still a work in progress.

As DubT said, "communicate". In addition, here is some good reading material:

https://sheldonbrown.com/tandem.html
https://www.tandemcycleworks.com/firs...irst_ride.html
https://www.gtgtandems.com/tech/propmethod.html
https://www.rodbikes.com/articles/web...ngstarted.html

Good luck, and HAVE FUN!

Paul J

We started riding a tandem in earnest this past spring. Ended the year with 1,110 miles. My stoker had been riding her "Comfort" style Trek mountain bike on bike paths with our grand-kids maybe 50 miles a year and I've been riding for years on racing bikes (see listed below) with high cadence. I have wanted to ride with her for decades but it never came together so I was excited to say the least. She was was pretty motivated which was fun and was a very quick learner. I really over communicated and made sure she was good. Within just a few rides we were getting pretty much in sync. The only thing I did for me, right or wrong, was get her to rest with the same foot down as me. I figured she was the one learning so give me that one since I had 50+ years of memory in my legs! :-) pretty much everything else I went with what she wanted. She wanted a helmet mirror so she have that so it is fun having her keeping me informed of whats going on behind us. She does the navigating for us too. Best of luck, this shared experience has been one of the coolest things for me and something that I've been wishing for, it is Wonderfully fun!

Bill G

Wife and I have been riding over 13 years together now and we took to it with no problems. We had no issues and felt comfortable after about 15 to 20 minutes on our first ride and it's only gotten better, we have never looked back. We were lucky I quess, some couples struggle for a while before they get the hang of it. It does take teamwork..

Ride Safe All,
Bill G

StephenH

With both the stokers I've ridden with, we got used to riding with each other pretty quick, there was still some learning to do in riding the tandem, though. Stoker #1 had ridden with several other captains over quite a few miles, so more of the learning was on my end.
Stoker #2 puts her left foot down and leans left, I put my right foot down and lean right, so we had to work out what to do there.
Cadences weren't a big issue. Maybe it's easier for the stoker to ride with a masher than with a spinner.
Stoker #1 had a harder time when I coasted, Stoker #2 can sense that pretty easily.
First time I got on the tandem, it just felt completely wrong- weight's in the wrong place, etc. It took about a thousand miles before that feeling pretty well went away. There's been a couple of times where I rode the tandem 500 miles or more without riding my single bike, then when I finally got back on my single bike, it felt completely wrong. I've heard of a few stokers who got back on their single bikes and forgot to steer, too.

B. Carfree

It took about twenty miles for my wife and I to get completely comfortable on our first tandem twenty-five years ago. A few days after that first ride we took that tandem out on a 500 mile shakedown tour in the coast range of Northern California that had about 100 mile of off-road and two days out of five that involved heavy rain. In fairness, we had been riding together for years and had ridden over 100,000 miles together on half-bikes before we started riding twogether on the tandem.

We did a LOT of verbal communication in the early-going and we also do a lot of talking when we are returning to the tandem after a bit of a lay-off. It's always better to say too much as opposed to saying too little. You'll know when you two are so in sync there is no longer any need to discuss gear changes, coasting, standing or braking.

Although it may not be as critical for your team as it is for ours (we do the unusual big male stoker/small female captain), I encourage both of you to work on your riding skills. Do balance work (dance, yoga, martial arts) if that interests you and definitely get a set of rollers and use them from time to time. When I become a bit of a wild child my captain will gently prod me to spend a few hours on the rollers. If nothing else, it encourages me to mind my movements.

Congratulations on the new-to-you tandem. Fun times ahead, I'm sure.

jolly_ross

A Tandem is not a democracy, it's nice benign dictatorship - but not everyone gets a vote. It's just as important that the captain realises this as the stoker. Where we are going to go, when, what we'll do when we get there - all that sort of stuff is a team decision. When riding the bike you will either: just do as you're told - or equally important - do the telling, clear and simple.

DCwom

For us I'd say basic comfort was quick, 20 miles or so on a couple of short rides. What I mean by basic comfort is starting, stopping, breaking with constant verbal communication. It was sometime after 200-300 miles when we began to communicate through the pedals and the need for verbal communication became less important, i.e. we can read each others effort and follow accordingly. Around 500 miles my stoker went to clip-less pedals and stayed clipped in at stops.

I would say there are different levels of comfort too, kicking back on a rail-trail verses city streets or screaming down a mountain hillside are not the same comfort level, it's an on-going process.

waynesulak

I will add that those are good links. There is lots of good advice and worth reading.

Wayne

WheelsNT

By far the most common trouble spot for folks new to tandems is disagreement about what the cadence should be. If you put a computer *with cadence* at both positions, then captain and stoker can have an informed discussion about cadence. Without computers, you're both guessing, particularly if one or both of you are inexperienced cyclists that haven't ridden enough to have a sense of what cadence is.

We actually bought two Cateye Astrale 8's and spliced the wires so they both run off the same set of sensors. This way the stoker has her own display -- with cadence -- right in front of her. I quickly found out that her cadence comfort range was *way* narrower than mine. I'd prefer to be 100-115. She is comfortable from 85-95. I learned to watch the display, and when we get to 95, shift. Being a little low (e.g. 82) is much better than being too high. The display helps her, too -- once she can see you shifting and keeping the cadence low for her, she will appreciate that. If she doesn't have a reference for how fast the cadence it is, she might just subjectively feel like it's too fast all the time. And, when your legs are tired, the same numerical cadence feels faster than it did when your legs were fresh. After all, however accurate *your* sense of cadence is, hers is less accurate -- she may not have the foggiest idea what it is. After watching the display a little, you will both be able to have an accurate conversation about what you want the cadence to be.

merlinextraligh

I'd agree with this, and it's going to vary for every team. I think it will also likely be faster if the stoker is already comfortable riding a single bike in traffic.

For us, I'd say were pretty comfortable tooling around within a ride or two. Riding fast, soon after. Standing and sprinting after that. Riding in a paceline a little longer. Then riding in a competitive group ride a bit longer. Racing a criterium on the tandem was a bit of a leap.

Now, we're to the point that my stoker actually said it was fun descending in a road race, elbow to elbow at 60mph. Brave woman.

jolly_ross

My stoker is clipped in and keeps her feet up when stopped - this makes for much tidier takeoffs. In order to do this I have to keep the bike bolt upright when we stop and not let the bike lean a bit like you do with a halfbike - it's a trust thing - this means me coming forward off the saddle - both feet on the ground to stop. She pedals backward to bring the right pedal up for me in anticipation of start and has learnt to watch where my legs are and not whack me in the shin.

I call "coast" for coasting - usually in anticipation of corners, although her cranks are shorter it would be a bit of a disaster to ground one in a corner.

Sometimes I call for coming bumps too - if the pedals are horizontal she can stand a bit over the bump, there's carbon bars and a thudbuster post on the back but these can only do so much.

I also call for hand signals, I never let go of the bars, she can of course.

A final rare call is for coming gear changes - the Rohloff doesn't like changing under heavy load. Usually me easing off takes away more than half the horse and all is well - but if I've fecked up and left an uphill change too late then I need her to ease off too. Also sometimes I roll to a halt in too high a gear and need to wind back a few gears before we start, sometimes she's on the pedals with me holding the bike on brakes - I can usually manage to ease off for the gear change by lifting the right pedal with my toe.

The last trick we have is sometimes for fiddly maneuvering with me walking astride the bike - I can avoid having to push by gearing right down and asking her to pedal slowly.

She's just the *best* stoker.

budhaslug

My stoker and I took to the tandem almost immediately, but we have a somewhat unique situation. I was an experienced cyclist on Road, Mountain, and Fixed gears while my wife hadn't ridden a bike for many years due to balance problems as a result of a car accident induced stroke. She tried a few times to ride a single after we met, but usually ended up falling over during starting/stopping because of her partial paralysis and neglect of her left arm and leg. When we bought our first tandem (which is just now being retired 10 years later), she had ridden a few times on one of my bikes on our indoor trainer to get comfortable, but really hadn't cycled on the road at all. She was a great stoker almost immediately. Having no real cycling experience meant that she took all of her habits from me and the way we learned to ride the tandem. We actually do very little verbal communication on the bike because she knows what all the motions I make feel like... it is just what she thinks riding a bike is like. When I want to coast, I simply let off the pedals and she responds instantly and coasts. When I stop and put my left foot down, she just stays centered and doesn't try to balance because she doesn't think to try to balance the bike. Her cadence quickly became my normal cadence. About the only verbal communication we need is rising out of the saddle for rough roads and telling each other if we need to drink or slow our pace on a climb. Otherwise we mostly just read each other's cues through the timing chain.

Ludkeh

Paul J, I think you started at the same place I'm at. Hopefully with the same outcome. I'm also thinking of getting my wife a helmet mirror. That way she can keep track off our rear! I'm also picking up a Cardo BK1-Duo bluetooth communication system. She says my voice is very low toned and soft so she sometimes has a hard time hearing me in normal regular conversation. I really don't want to be yelling above the wind noise. I'd rather let electronics help in that regard.

Ludkeh

Thanks for the tip Wheels NT. The spiced computer is a great idea! I've already got a Cateye Astrale 8 on the Captains bar and have a old Cateye Astrale 8 on another bike that's rarely used. I think I might have a weekend project.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions, we're very encouraged! This past year was very difficult for us when my wife was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. After surgery, and treatment her prognosis is now excellent. This jolt make us realize that we only have NOW together, and we should use every bit of it as best we can! I'd rather get my miles in with her at my back than riding alone!

merlinextraligh

In our experience, there's much less need for a mirror on a tandem given that the stoker doesn't need to keep looking forward, and can easitly turn or tilt their head to see back.

cplager

I can see that, but a helmet mirror seems like such a small investment, it still seems worthwhile.

On a separate note: On a recumbent forum, there was recently a discussion about changing the timing ring so the captain and stoker didn't have to pedal at the same cadence. This could work for a non-recumbent tandem as well, although it would make standing up (quite a bit) more difficult. Just something to think about.

Tom Spohn

Our friends new to tandeming approached a small but steep rise. The captain shifted down to an appropriate gear and began spinning like mad to conquer the hill. Stoker not using clipless or toe clip pedals had both feet come off the pedals and the captain got to crest the hill entirely on his own effort. Now they both have clipless pedals and they are way better at communicating they are both smiling both up hill and down hill.

Our own experience is that if the stoker cranks are the right length--ie. not too long--the stoker will get used to a higher cadence.

chris ss

The other thing I'd add is that finding the Rear Admiral a saddle that she's very happy with is worth every hour and dollar that it takes. As well as investing some time with her handlebar position and setup- length of the stem, type and width of bars, bar-ends or not, tape/padding, etc etc. Basically set up her stoker compartment for maximum comfort. Stop for breaks, coffee/tea/lunch/soup/beer/wine, etc. And then communicate, relax and enjoy the ride and companionship, don't be too, uh, anal, about: cadence, speed, miles covered, keeping up with XXX, matching your time/speed on your single bike, etc. Like many other aspects of the man-and-wife life, oftentimes this is much more about relationship for her than it is for him; and much more about relationship for her than about other things (like miles, speed, exercise, heartrate, etc).

(Please don't jump on that too hard if it's not so for your wife/stoker, cuz I most certainly realize it's a generalization and not true for every couple, stoker, or woman. I'm throwing it in cuz it shows up often enuf, it might be, and hope it's helpful; move on + ignore it if it's not.)

And then, see Rule #1.

Here's wishing you many happy safe miles and years together.

Paul J

A couple of funny on this topic. Way back in the early to mid 80's I worked at Trek and was part of the "Pedal Head" contingent. We were all racers and I don't know if we started it or not but we called the Tourist "Freds". Freds used mirrors helmet or on the glasses bow but none of us would be caught with a mirror, (or unfortunately at the time a helmet other then when racing). Hopefully no offense to my tourist friends on this board. :-) When my Stoker asked for a mirror I bristled but then thought why not and that has been my position ever since. When you've ridden forever you sort of get a sixth sense about overtaking cars so I've probably already heard it coming but I love hearing Rachel say "Car Back"! She also does all the hand signals which we are still trying to figure-out do we use the correct gestures from when cars didn't have turn indicators or just outstretched arm in the direction of the turn?

My other funny is Rachel (Stoker) is very competitive so early in our season she told me we were going to ride 1,000 miles, now remember this is someone who hasn't ridden on the road and only had about 50 miles per year in. So I tell her,why don't we shoot for 500. As I mentioned in a earlier post in this thread, we did 1,110 last year.

We are empty nest and I wasn't getting as many miles in on my half bike because I hated to leave her home and this has really fixed that problem and we are having a blast. I left the corporate world seven years ago to work for a very large church and this week we buried a 59 and 57 year old guys. One an avid runner so I want to enjoy what I've got for as long as I can. We celebrate 40 years in 2014 and rather then go to Europe we're planning on buying our sized to us Tandem and enjoy this great discovery! Europe will have to wait for a few years. Now should that bike be coupled?

I'm really glad I found this forum!

akexpress 

My wife and I both came from strong single biking back rounds including road and mtn bike racing. One of the reasons we bought a tandem is I was tired of getting dropped by my lovely wife stoker. She is retired and gets to ride much more then I and is just plain fitter and younger. It wasn't much but about 5% so over the course of 60-70 miles it was a few minutes and we never saw each other. When we first got the tandem she told me within 15 minutes that we had made a big mistake and spent a lot of money that was wasted. She hung in on the trip of 5 days and asked every stoker we met how they liked tandeming. We never had any bike handling or actual riding issues it was a lack of control on her part. Fast forward 5 years and many trips. We are at dinner alone and she tells me the best vacations we do are on the tandem. She makes me look good on the tandem and we have met some of our best friends on these trips. We now own a Calfee road tandem and two mountain tandems go figure and BTW she is always right.

Clarabelle

We retired a couple of years ago and are relatively new to tandems--about 800 miles on our Mocha. Some say it takes about 500 miles before you really start working as a team. From our experience, that is about right. Cadence was an issue at first, and I had to listen to my stoker who tends to mash rather than spin. Now, after several hundred miles, it doesn't seem to be an issue. I don't know if she got use to spinning, or I've learned to slow a little. Starting was the trickiest to learn and we are still working on that when it comes to hills. I was worried about how my stoker would take to being behind me and not making decisions at first, but now she much prefers the tandem over our singles.

Just remember to be patient, communicate always, and heed the "Golden Rules of Tandems:"

Rule #1 The stoker is always right!
Rule #2 See rule #1

ct-vt-trekker

I think I was lucky or we just ride the same. Our very first tandem ride was a metric century on a borrowed tandem. We figured if we could do that then we'd be compatible enought to buy are own, which we did but a few years later. Once we got our own it took us 4-5 months to get everything dialed in so we were actuallly comforatble. Some of this was bike fit but also technique . Give it some time and be nice to each other during this stressfull period.