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The Sweet Success of Our First Horsey Hundred on the Tandem
The night before the ride, my wife was nervous enough about the 100k on the tandem to make me nervous about the 100k on the tandem. We talked at length about doing the 50 and adding on at the end to get 100k if we felt good enough. My wife almost had me convinced – I even relented, because the route was actually around 65-miles and we’re not the best on the hills. Put us on the flat or on a downhill and we’re hammers. We struggle on the hills and I had no desire to hurt my wife… on the other hand, 100k. Horsey Hundred. [Yes, technically it’s 100 miles but even I knew we couldn’t do that]
We rolled out to a cool but perfect 50-ish° with arm warmers and normal summer kit. With the hills, we’d be sweating in no time.
In the excitement, I went out way too hard and had myself nervous after the first ten miles that 65 might be too much. After eighteen, my legs started protesting and I asked my wife if we could dial it back on the hills a little bit and spin them. Back home, where we have about three legitimate hills, I push a little harder on the way up and my wife gives me a break on the downhill and flats. On the horsey hundred, there’s a hill every 45 seconds, so there’s no break whatsoever and I was pushing way too hard and too often.
We calmed it down around mile 20 and things got decidedly better for us. By contrast, Jess was perfect as the rear admiral. Unfortunately, it seemed Mike and Jonathan got a little bored waiting for us on the ups and then trying to keep up on the downhills. They’d ride up ahead and Mike would come back and collect us now and again.
I was way too focused on all of the little details, mainly because we were topping 30-mph (around 50kph) on the downhills and I had my wife on the back to think of. The new Co-Motion performed admirably, though. It was really awesome, actually. Vastly superior to our old steel Periscope.
About 40-miles in, when I could see that taking it easier on the hills was working wonders, I began to relax and have a little more fun with it. I’d been reassuring my wife along the way but really picked it up after 40. We met up with the main group at a rest stop as they were on the longer 72-mile route and regrouped for all of a few minutes. Jess and I rode our ride and I was finally to a point I could really enjoy it.
As the group pulled away we started talking in between climbs and even on some of the easier uphill efforts.
At the 55-mile mark we were really feeling excited about the ride. We were all by our lonesome and having a fantastic time of it. It was our first Horsey Hundred on our tandem and I’m here to tell you, I’ve never had more fun on a bicycle. We absolutely rocked it.
As we approached the finish, my rear admiral asked if I wanted to finish at the finish line or just head back to the hotel, taking a shortcut. At first I said I wanted to take it to the finish line, but after thinking it over, the hotel sounded better. We made the right turn and skipped the last hill… a leg-burner and ego-bruiser.
We were well over the 62.5 mark by then. 100 kilometers and over 4,200 feet of climbing. On the tandem. I think I might need a couple of days to process exactly how cool it was to ride with my wife on the tandem for such a tough ride – to gut it out together. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to put it into words.
Oh, and the bike performed perfectly.
Ready for the Horsey Hundred… On A Tandem(!)
We’re heading down to Kentucky for our annual trip to do the Horsey Hundred, one of the best supported rides in all the United States. We’ve been making the trip since 2014 or ‘15 with the exception being the Covid year.
This year will be different from all the others, though. This year we’re taking our new Co-Motion tandem.
I’m giddy but my wife is nervous about the hills. This isn’t the same terrain we’re used to. With a 50/34 compact crank and an 11-40 cassette, I believe we have enough gear for anything we might run into down here.
The bike is prepped and ready to go. The chain is lubed and everything is dialed in.
Let the good times roll! More later.
And Just Like That, The Tandem Is Ready to Roll
The Co-Motion is ready for riding. The last of the new parts came in yesterday and I put the bike back together after work.
It’s just like it was before the crank fell apart Saturday… only the cranks are tight now.
Jess and I are stoked everything came together so quickly after the mess over the weekend.
Let the good times roll!
Putting the Tandem Together Again
Our rear derailleur came in yesterday for the tandem. It was my late night at the jobsite, so I didn’t get to start dialing it in until after 9 last night. This one was a little trickier than I was expecting but I got it together and properly set before 10 (or just thereabouts).
Our Gates parts are due in tomorrow, so they’ll go on the bike as soon as I get home from work and we should be set for Horsey.
Fingers crossed!
A Fantastic Fifty… On the Single Bikes?!
Every long ride I’ve done since last August at the Assenmacher 100 has been done captaining a tandem with my wife in the rear admiral position.
With the tandem down for repairs, we had no choice but to take the singles out for a spin. I’ve made much ado over how I finally learned to ride with my wife so we can both have a marvelous time, no matter what the pace. It was employed yesterday and we had an awesome time. We needed that for Horsey.
The weather was perfect and the traffic heavy but polite (for the most part).
My wife just said I was a sight to behold, that rainbows must have literally shot out my butt as I helped her up many of the hills.
Folks, it was good times and noodle salad.
Now to get that tandem put back together! The tandem is WAY easier than singles! And more fun.
A Crash Averted on the Saturday Morning Ride
I had the tandem prepped and ready to roll. I had everything dialed in, down the the smallest detail. I aired the tires, filled the water bottles and got a few goodies ready so we could snack on the ride. Jess and I were stoked. Horsey is end of next week and we’re ready to roll!
We rolled the super-light tandem out the front door just after 8am and got the show on the road.
We were in synch as good as we’ve ever been and were cruising 20-mph into the crossing headwind. Even in the headwind we were in great shape. Everything was perfect. We had a great group, too. Both Chucks, Mike, Diane and we picked up Matt on the road. We were cruising at 19-mph into the headwind when Mike cruised by and said he wanted a turn up front so he could raise his heart rate and warm up (it was chilly for this time of year, and cloudy). We went to the back but eased in behind Diane when Matt opened a hole for us. Jess and I gave it some gas to latch on and, just as we made it, all hell broke lose. Literally.
My left foot, all of a sudden, started to roll wildly, then it flew away from the bike taking the left side of my crank and pedal with it. With my foot dangling out in the great blue yonder, all of a sudden the tandem wouldn’t pedal, forward or back. To make matters worse, the bike started fishtailing wildly. I struggled against each swing of the bikes rear end. Then, PSSSSSSHHHHHHHH. The tire flatted. I could feel it go and we still hadn’t stopped yet. Luckily, Jess had unclipped from her pedal and, as we came to a rest at the side of the road, put a balancing foot down to steady us. I put my foot down with the crank arm and Gates belt pulley attached to my shoe.
My crank had come undone and the synch belt had gotten caught on the wheel and wrapped around it, locking it up. It was a miracle we kept the bike rubber side down and an even bigger miracle that we were almost all the way to the back of the group when it happened!
Matt hopped off his bike and unclipped my crank arm and pedal from my shoe. I got off the bike and started assessing the damage. Our rear derailleur was in two pieces and hanging from the chain. The carbon drive belt was wrapped around the wheel and I unraveled it. Matt gave the wheel a spin… it was clicking against a cable, but there was no visible damage. The belt drive pully hit the ground at some point and had several splines that were ground out of shape. Finally, after close inspection, the belt had cracked when it wrapped around the wheel. Oh, and the derailleur hanger was bent.
Thankfully, in all of that commotion (pun intended), none of the paint was damaged. Not a scratch.
Our daughter picked us up after having ridden only 7-1/2 miles.
We decided to wash up and eat before we did anything about the bike. While we were cleaning up, our daughter place a container that once held twelve-day old oatmeal that had become a petri dish in her car somewhere. The house stank so bad, we went out for lunch. We laughed quite hard over the ordeal.
Sitting at lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant, we started ordering parts. My wife picked up the Ultegra R8000 derailleur first. That comes in Monday. Then we ordered the pulley and belt. Those arrive Wednesday (enough time for me to put the bike together just before Horsey…
Then we went and had the wheel checked out at the local Trek store, and bought a new tire. The wheel was barely out of true, so Tommy got it back in shape. I paid and we rolled. I’ve put the new tire on and taken all of the parts off that will be replaced…
Then I checked Jess’s crank. It was loose too. Four turns, at least. It was only a matter of time before that went, too.
Note to self, always check the cranks are tight on a new bike! Thankfully, we’re just out some money – and none of it had to go to medical bills!
Oh, and we’re riding the single bikes today. Hopefully for more than 7-1/2 miles.
What You Need to Know About Buying, Riding and Fine-Tuning a New Bike; Also, “It’s Tandem Time, Baby”!
If you’ve dropped a good bit of money on a bicycle and you think, because you paid upwards of several Thousand Dollars, the bike will be problem free for the foreseeable future, you’ll have to think again… and likely a lot sooner than you’d think.
When you bring a new bike home from the shop, the chance it’s properly perfectly tuned and ready to roll is somewhere between slim and none. I suppose, before I really dig into this post, I should clarify that I’m exceedingly picky that our bikes (my wife and my bikes) are operating at their peak.
It usually starts out like this; you bring a new bike home, ride it a time or two, and things start creaking or rubbing or the derailleurs don’t shift quite as crisply as the bike settles in. Most shops give a free one month checkup to readjust things after they settle.
I’ve never taken a bike in for its one month. I can’t last that long knowing I’ve got something that needs correcting. I’d guess that the electric groupsets are a little less problematic, but I really wouldn’t know, it’d just be a guess. Mechanical groupsets, however, I do know something about and they require some tinkering. I’ve been working on our tandem, little changes here and there, for the better part of a month.
Today will be our first ride on the tandem where I’m totally pleased with the mechanics of the bike. The front brake was a quarter turn on the left pad too tight, the derailleurs were a half-turn (or so) off on the set screws, the rotors are trued, the calipers are set where I want them… and there are no mysterious “clicks” in the rear derailleur and the front only needs to be trimmed on the last two (smallest) cogs on the back and doesn’t rub in any other gear but the small/small combination (as it should, it doesn’t rub on the derailleur, it rubs the big chainring from being cross-chained).
The real question is, would our tandem have sufficed as it was when we rode it the first time? Well, it was really nice that first ride, but the adjustments needed to happen to really make the bike ride how we wanted it.
It’s been like this for every bike I’ve owned. Every bike my wife has owned except one (her Assenmacher is the lone exception – that bike was perfect right out of the back of my wife’s SUV) but that bike is a 2004 and was kept after quite well)… every other bike we’ve ever brought home has required a little tinkering.
The key is knowing this is coming and enjoying the process of sorting it out!
UPDATE: On a crazy fluke, the front crank fell apart on our ride today. Check the crank bolts are tight. Often.
Venge Day 2023 (Better Late Than Never?)
I’ve been writing about Venge Day since 2014… so nine years (!). Venge Day is simply the first day of the new season the weather is good enough that I’ll choose my Specialized Venge over my Trek 5200.
Venge Day normally hits in March or April. This is the latest by a month, I’m thinking.
I don’t know what I was thinking waiting this long.
Normally, after my wife drove us home on a Thursday evening, we’d take the tandem out. Last night she had a board meeting, though, so I had to ride alone if I was going to ride. The weather was about a 4-mph breeze out of the southeast shy of being perfect. Sunny, 70°, glorious. I was tired, though. Work has been brutal lately and I just wanted to lay down and chill for a bit, but having the argument in my head, all I could think of was what a waste of time that would be. I decided to get ready.
I almost took the Trek because I had a tough time finding my aero seatpost Garmin Radar Mount… until I remembered it was on my gravel bike. I aired the tires, put a full water bottle on the bike, got dressed in my Affable Hammers kit and rolled my Venge out the door.
The first half-mile was a bit on the “what am I doing out here, I’m way too tired for this” side… but then my legs got my heart and head into the game and it was on. My head cleared up and I started smiling.
Folks, I did all of twelve miles and had an ear-to-ear grin for eleven of them.
Venge Day was exceedingly late this year, but my God was it good!
GOLFIN’, Baby! Back on the Sticks in 2023!
Getting old partially sucks in that I can’t do things I used to do without a care in the world, without experiencing some pain tied to it… like golf. It’s also tricky having so many freaking expensive hobbies. But I digress.
As fate (or something) had it, I had an opportunity to hit a golf course with one of my new colleagues Monday after work. Now, it may seem odd, that after eight days of work in a row I would want to do anything other than sleep after work, but it is golf we’re talking about here.
I am fully back to loving the sport after the heartbreak of missing the fun of golfing with my dad. It’s taken almost a full decade, but I’m healed. The trick, of course, is finding the time to fit golf in, and golf is absolutely going to take a back seat to cycling. I’m much better on a bike than I am with a set of clubs on my back.
That said, there’s nothing like absolutely ripping a drive down the center of the fairway. Nothing. In fact, I’m going to drop a little bit of a logic grenade right here; you’ll hear a lot of good players perpetuate the quote, “you drive for show, but you putt for dough”. Those good players are absolutely right. And entirely full of it at the same time. For the really good players, when you already drive and hit your irons great, you pick shots up on your opponent by putting less.
If, however, you’re a weekend or occasional duffer like me, there’s nothing like lacing one down the fairway 275 yards your first time out… just like I did the other day… like four times. That’s what keeps me coming back.
I had quite a few par holes Monday. Vastly better than I’d expected. And the cherry on top is that I’m over the heartbreak of losing my dad and best golfing buddy.
Oh, how nice it is to be back on the sticks!
The Best Tires for Tandem Road Cycling – From Size to Brand (And What to Avoid!).
My wife and I have a lot of experience on tandems over the last eight-ish years. We rode Continental Grand Sport tires for the first four years or so before changing to Specialized Turbo Pro tires when we, I kid you not, rode the Continentals do the Kevlar. Not one flat. Ever. However, one ride on the Turbo Pros and we’ll never look back.
Now, if you want fast tires, you could do worse than Continental. However, if you like a little bit of comfort in your ride, you can’t do worse than Continental. Continental tires are very fast because they’re very hard and unforgiving. You’ll feel every bump and on a tandem, where you’re stuck in the saddle, feeling every pebble gets old in a hurry. That’s where we get into the “real world” vs “test world” differences in tires. Hard, unforgiving tires are fast on a steel roller but they sap energy on a road with imperfections. On a tandem, that’s amplified.
For that reason, my wife and Rear Admiral agrees, Continental tires are not fun.
Specialized Turbo Pro tires are fantastic on a tandem, though the science says you’ll give up a few watts for that comfort. Of course, if you know how that works in real life (opposed to a roller in a factory setting), the watt-loss for a supple tire is a fair tradeoff because comfortable is fast.
We’re currently riding Bontrager Hardcase Lite R3 32mm TLR tires and are enjoying them massively. They allow our tandem to corner like it’s on rails and the ride is exceedingly comfortable. As with all Bontrager tires, you give a few watts up over the faster tires (Vittoria, etc.), but with a tandem, puncture protection is at a premium and puncture protection normally adds watts.
Tubeless or not tubeless?
There’s the issue of tubeless tires that has to be discussed. We’re rolling tubeless ready tires for the road but we’ve got tubes. Why? Well, at higher pressures, should you get a puncture, the liquid latex will spray all over your bike till the hole seals. Erm… no thanks. We do have tubeless for our gravel wheels and tires (45mm set at 50psi). I have no doubt tubeless would be more comfortable on the road tires, but I’ll take the “no liquid latex on the frame” benefit over a small (if even perceptible) difference in comfort.
Tire width.
Now, I ride 24mm tires on my Trek road bike (the frame, from 1999, only allows for 25mm, and barely). I ride 26mm tires on my Specialized road bike (28s are max but the clearance is questionable for 28s). My wife and I have a lot of experience with a wide range of wheels and tires. I’ve ridden 28s, 30s and 32s on our tandems and I’ll keep this simple; 30s and 32s are best in a road setting.
The 32mm Bontrager R3 TLR tires we’re running now are phenomenal. They’re fast and comfortable. We ran 30mm Turbo Pro tires from Specialized on our last tandem and those were fantastic as well. Not a single puncture and thousands of miles of comfortable riding (I do rotate the tires). I’d never ride anything that wide on a single road bike because I like sprinting a lot and anything more than a 26mm tire gets too bouncy for me when putting the power down out of the saddle. On a tandem, though, they’re butter. And butter, as we all know, is good.
Tire Pressure.
Pressure is a tricky subject that I don’t typically weigh in too heavy on. I do take fair care to make sure whatever I’m riding is as low as it can go without bouncing when I sprint. With our tandem, our Rolf wheels come with a lovely little sticker on the rim that gives “max” pressures for certain tire sizes. Their max for 32s is 85 psi. I run ours there. They’re comfortable and feel fast and we haven’t gotten a pinch flat yet, so I think that’s where we should be. Easy enough. My wife and I are not what you would call “skinny”. Rider weight must always be taken into account for tire pressure. It’s a pretty simple equation, though.
So, if you’re looking for a good tandem tire, Bontrager and Specialized make great options. Just remember this; on a tandem, you want puncture protection. It’s worth a few watts.
Fit Recovery 