Sunday saw a vets Time Trial, expertly run by 3fidi’s Michael Carr.
Ashley and I were there piloting separate Cannondale tandems in the vets TT, Ash had another tandem volunteer, Rosemary Robinson, as his stoker (his originally organised vision impaired person was disallowed due to age conflict i.e. 32 and vets need to be 35+) and I had vision impaired rider Don Mankewich as my stoker.
The course was Stromlo park to turn at Huntley just before the 3-sister hills and do that twice for a 26km course. Even though there are no big climbs, that is a fairly rolling course, and my main aim was to try and beat Ashley.
Before the race we had worked out we should be doing low 40+ mins for the race, Ashley started about 4 minutes ahead of me, with riders going off at 30sec intervals.
Don and I overtook some riders fairly early on but didn’t see Ashley until we got closer to the turn were he and Rosemary were already heading back up the other way, my legs were already tired before we started but we still managed a reasonable pace.
The little hills are killers for tandems and it is hard to work out how to tackle a small climb most effectively, at the last turn near Huntley I noticed that Ashley seemed to have gained a little on us…. damn let’s push that last leg a bit more.
On the last run back to the finish, we had fine tuned the attack strategy to the small hills on the way….. pump the biggest gear you have on the lead up to the small power-move climb and really get that momentum up as high as possible, because once you hit the hill the tandem is going to drop speed like scarface dropped coke, then stand up the last half of the climbs and lactated our legs to an inch from exploding.
Passing some solo riders like they were standing still on the flats leading up to our power-moves.
We managed to reel in some time on Ashly, but as we finished Ashley still beat us by 10 seconds over the line at 44 min 54 secs.
Luckily the race times are calculated by age-standard handicap, so I beat Ashley 🙂
Fastest male 40:38 min.
Fastest female 47:19 min.
I was 2 seconds faster than my calculated age handicap and, compared to my previous TT along the same course, I probably was ca. 3min slower than my solo run.
Hm, looking at the ACTVets results page i see Bleeksie and Don in fact won the tandems class. No fair! How about a handicap for gender??!! I can see there will have to be a round 2 of this contest. Maybe a tandem scratch race will settle it…
Doing a TT on a tandem is tough work, but it’s also a unique cycling challenge. As Bleeksie says, attacking hills requires careful sychronisation between stoker and pilot. You also really need to be attuned to each other’s pedal stroke, and be aware of when your partner is reaching their max hr/lactic threshold. The good thing is, if one starts to redline, the other can take over and let them recover a bit.
Sure there is not the same freedom as on a single bike, but there is the reward of having worked (and suffered) together seamlessly as a team on the same machine. The other great reward is being able to barrel past people on single bikes on the flat and see them turn around with “WTF was that?!!?!” looks on their faces. Priceless.
Watching the other tandem teams finish (there were 4 tandems participating on Sunday) was also a blast. Those bikes are quite a sight when they are wound up to full speed on the crit circuit with stoker and pilot sprinting out of the saddle.
With a couple more 3Fidi A and B graders on the job we could get some serious tandem racing happening this season. At the very least it will make a change from getting beaten by Downing. Anyone who wants to get involved just ask me or Bleeksie for a quick training session. Easy.