Back to normal (well almost)

So RAAM is done and dusted. We’ll hopefully write more about it at some point, but it was such a huge, amazing, all encompassing experience that it’s difficult to make sense of it all. We are now rested, recovered and looking forward to our ‘reward’ - yup, we’re riding PBP.

It feels a little weird to put a rack and heavy leather saddles back on Roberta, but for a 1200km event we need the luggage space and comfort is king. This will be our fifth Grand Randonee, and Roberta’s third, unlike her other two there will be no hotels rooms and no drop bags. Everything we need on the road, we’ll take with us. The bigger adaption is mentally and physically preparing for the ride. It’s surprising us how quickly we’ve adapted to stopping and eating every few miles. The first stage of PBP is 138km, which may have come as a big shock to the system. We had a great time last weekend with back to back 200km rides which has provided some confidence that we can still ride long distances and was a good shakedown for Roberta. We are finding that we need food much more regularly than we have previously - the short intensive efforts have (not surprisingly) done anything to improve our fat burning capability.

There are still a couple of changes we need to do to the bike, principally changing the rear brake - we are taking off the disk brake and just using a rim brake for PBP. We’ll also change the tyres before we go and take raceblades to fit on the front if there is likely to be rain on the event. Hopefully all the rain will have fallen before we get there.

We’ve really enjoyed riding the last few weeks without training plans and pressure. It’s great that we are both still keen just to ride a bike - there was always a little worry that we wouldn’t want to see one again for a while. We’ve not ridden a trainer/sufferfest session yet! It’s time to ride without pressure, guilt and to just enjoy it.

Tracking TandemThings Racing Across America

It’s less than 2 weeks to go until we embark on Race Across America! After 18 months of training and preparation it’s hard to put into words what it’s like to finally be so close to the starting line. I don’t feel too nervous - I’m sure that will come! - but we’re certainly excited to get going.

As you may know, we’re aiming to set a new mixed tandem category record, and complete the 3000 mile race in under 6 days 10 hours. To that end every hour of the day will be spent racing, eating or sleeping, so we won’t have much opportunity to post updates during the race. So we’re sharing some links now with places you can follow our progress, should you wish.

1 Tractalis

http://www.tractalis.com/live/raam2015/html5/ (Just launched, in Beta!)

This shows our most up-to-date location based on GPS tracker in the follow-vehicle. (As I write this, it’s actually showing a replay of RAAM 2013 just as a demo!).

You’ll need to know our team number: T409 - Love Sweat & Gears - Tandems

They also have apps: (iPhone) (Android)

2 RAAM website

http://goo.gl/hwZTxt

This carries updates of our progress through the 55 Time-stations (aprx 1 every 55 miles), based on official race records. They also have a link to a map of that data.

3 Facebook

Team: https://www.facebook.com/lovesweatandgears

Joth & Emma: https://www.facebook.com/TandemThings

Make sure to “Like” and follow the team page, there won’t be much opportunity to post to our own page during the ride. The team page will have updates on all three LS&G teams (2 women, 4 women, 4 Tandems) so

4 Twitter

Team: https://twitter.com/LoveSweatGears

Joth & Emma: https://twitter.com/tandemthings

These are mostly just links to postings on Facebook, but there maybe the occasional bonus update there too!

5 Ride Farther
http://ridefarther.com/ / https://www.youtube.com/user/Raammedia
This is the official Media outlet of Race Across America, and will host twice-daily video reports (also on their youtube channel) as well as maps, written reports, photo galleries and so on. Also they're promising a live video stream from of the teams press conference and from the starting line, 12 noon PST (that's 8pm BST).


Finally, a big massive thank you to everyone that has sponsored us in this undertaking. We’re on track to make a great donation to help the lives of Cystic Fibrosis sufferers everywhere. We’ve not really done a charity ride before so seems appropriate our first one is epic even by our standards! Every donation received, large or small, does motivate us a bit more to reach our goal.

The sponsorship link is on lovesweatandgears.net/tandems-2015 (hit “Donate Here”)

XTR Di2 parts on a road tandem

When we were spec'ing our Paketa back in May last year, we had at the back of our mind the possibility that one day there'd be a Di2 electronic shifting version of the Shimano MTB groupset, XTR, so we could mix in MTB parts like a rear derailleur at a later date to increase the gear range. When our knees are old and we need even more help on the steep climbs. Soon after Shimano did indeed announce XTR Di2, and Leonard Zinn helpfully confirmed that it would interoperate with Dura-Ace so tandems could reduce in mixing road levers with mountain derailleurs at will.
Roll on to January this year and my pre-ordered XTR rear derailleur finally arrived. Yay!

Unfortunately, just at the same time the same Mr Zinn published a follow up reporting not all was well in Di2 land:

I got some answers from Shimano about this, and I now know that you cannot mix any road FD (front derailleur) with an XTR Di2 (11-speed) rear derailleur (RD-M9050); it won’t work with any Di2 shifter, road or MTB.

I just had chance to experiment and this does indeed seem to be the case. Plug in the XTR rear derailleur on its own with the Dura-ace levers and it works a charm. But plug in the road front derailleur and the entire system seizes to a halt. No shifting on either end, no battery indicator, nothing. So as Leonard says the options are to convert the drive-train fully to XTR (both the RD and FD) or run it 1x11 speed without a FD. Neither of those options are good for us, as we want the much wider range you only get with the road FD (strange but true: the road double FD has a wider range than the MTB triple). Or else I guess, we could buy a second battery and run the front and rear derailleurs as completely independent systems. Yuck!

OR of course, plead with Shimano to issue a firmware update to allow this configuration! There's no electronic reason for the incompatibility, merely a policy decision of them wanting to enforce that the entire the drive train (derailleurs chains and cogs) are all from the same family. Unfortunately, electronic shifting and complex firmware configurations has increased the means through which they can enforce what are basically business decisions.

In the meantime, if you're in the market for a never used XTR rear derailleur let me know...

Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

Our RAAM training is progressing well, and we have just returned from an excellent training camp in Tucson with the other riders and most of the crew. It was an intensive weekend involving riding and organising in almost equal measures. It was a great learning experience, and we know whatever happens next June, there will be a lot of laughs with our amazing crew. Most of whom we were meeting for the first time, and we seemed to gel really well - we’re looking forward to more opportunities to get to know them before the Big Opportunity next June!

The team also had the privilege of being invited to lunch with the McAllisters, a local couple who have two granddaughters with cystic fibrosis, who we got to meet. It was a very touching reminder of the larger goal and why we’re putting ourselves through this, and we are grateful for the local chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation for organising it. There has been a few big steps forward in the treatment of CF in the last few years, and there is at least a glimmer of hope for some sufferers. While a complete cure is still some way away, the treatments now available and (hopefully) those in development offer a better standard of living for longer. The development cost is huge, but it is one of those problems where the money is having a real effect and the new treatments are making a huge difference to suffers. The sheer number of genetic variants of the disease also increases costs - there is no silver bullet here.

So, thank-you to everyone who has donated money so far. It’s making a difference!

Love Sweat & Gears Tandem Team 2015. - racing so kids can breathe.

Happy 10 years of Tandem Things!

This weekend my brother Mike and his wife Thea are out in London celebrating 10 years of marriage - and along with wishing them well,  this got us thinking about how it marks 10 years since we received our first tandem, Dobbin, and made out first tandem tour. And a very memorable few weeks it was -- let me retell the tail.

Dobbin on his 10 year anniversary - riding Stevens Canyon today

Dobbin was delivered to us around the 1st September, 2004. That first Dobbin was British Racing Green in colour. Unfortunately, he had a nasty dent in his top tube from a fork-lift accident in shipping. [And unfortunately the ravages of time against digital filing discipline mean I no longer appear to have any photos of him -- there maybe some analog photos in our loft back in London!].
Anyway, he was still perfectly ridable, so after a short and slightly wobbly test-ride out from the flat we lived in at the time, we decided to participate in a group ride from Richmond to Windsor that coming weekend (on Sunday September 5th, I believe). At this time, nether of us had ever been on a bike club ride of any sort; never worn lycra padded shorts; never even heard of drafting. It felt a bit like an induction by fire! The ride was a charity event, but we knew it was on because some participants in the "Cycling Plus" online forum were arranging to meet up "in real life" at it. We'd been following this forum closely while planning our first tandem purchase, mostly as "lurkers". We didn't even mention we'd be there for this ride: we figured we'd check them out from a distance and if they looked suspect, we could then slip away without notice! How different events could have been: as it turned out, IRL they looked safe enough (looks can be deceiving!!) so we went up and introduced ourselves, and met a number of friends that we keep in contact with to this day; mostly via the yacf.co.uk forum that is the great-grandchild of the C+ forummers. Charlotte, Vicky, Graham, and Spesh were amongst those on that ride. Not only did we meet some good friends that day, but some of our greatest inspirations too: when Charlotte visited us in California this summer I mentioned to her how she was the reason we ever got into longer (>200km) distance randonneuring. We followed her complete her first SR series (200, 300, 400 and 600km rides) a few years later, and I think that's the moment I thought to myself, if someone perfectly normal and pleasant like Charlotte could take on and achieve such feats, maybe I'd be able to one day too!
So, the ride went really well. We learnt so much. We had our first experience of a group of pretty serious looking cyclists hanging on our back wheel. We saw our first Brooks Swallow saddle (and how horrid I thought it looked!). We discovered the plastic saddles that had (incorrectly) shipped with our Thorn Adventure where not for us, and redoubled our resolve to get the B17s we had ordered. We surprised ourselves by not only doing the "long" route option out to Windsor, but also riding right the way back home with our new friends - possibly making it a 70 mile day, our longest to that date.

Having succeeded in such an enjoyable and noteworthy ride, you might have thought we were done for tandeming for our first month. But no! Just a short 5 days of work later, Friday evening on the 10th Sept found us loading up our tandem with 4 panniers stuffed full of camping gear, clothes, and everything we'd need for our first week-long tour. Neither of us had cycle-toured before. Neither had ridden a fully loaded bicycle before, let along a tandem, so setting off through the Friday evening SW London commuter traffic was again rather a trial by fire! We made it to Richmond park and were able to ease off a bit and take stock. Tempting to camp there our first night? No.. we pushed on and got all the way to the East Horsley campground - some 20 miles from our London flat. The following day we topped it with an 80 mile fully-loaded ride to Portsmouth and over the ferry to Ryde on the Isle of Wight. We found our campsite and checked in just before 8pm - I remember the girl at the checkin desk (in the adjoining pub) saying "sorry, the kitchen has just closed" and the landlady overhearing, taking one look at us both, and declaring No it Had Not just closed, grabbing the phone and telling the chef to bring up whatever two hot meals he had most readily to hand. Our first experience of the wonderful kindness you can receive when traveling by tandem!
So over the next week we toured the Isle, back over to the New Forest, Salisbury, Wylye Valley, and finally arrived at the Best Western just outside Bath on Friday 17th, looking rather road-weary but happy, and ready for my brother's wedding the next day!

In the ten years since then, Dobbin has toured with us on many occasions and in several continents. The winter we returned him for frame repair which is also when he changed from BRG to the custom dark metallic blue he sports today.

Dobbin living in our First Floor Flat, July 2005

Dobbin in Ireland, May 2007

Dobbin adventuring in Patagonia, January 2011

Dobbin touring in California, 2012

Dobbin filling in as Rando-Tandem last year

Eat, ride, sleep. Repeat.

Last weekend was spent exploring some of the issues we'll encounter on RAAM outside of our normal riding profile. In summary we've started to explore how a disrupted sleep pattern and riding multiple time trials with a break in between affects us. We've also had a lot of fun with tandems, had our behinds well and truly kicked by another tandem and put a little back into the sport of randonneuring by volunteering. As ever, we didn't really set out to do all that but it just sort of happened, and we need all the experience we can get! As the teams racing the 2014 edition of RAAM, including our teammate Lori, are coming to the finish line, it also marks a year to go for us. Gulp!

tandems everywhere on the Sunday ride!

Our weekend started with an early start on Saturday when we set off to ride in the final edition of the Beat the Clock time trial series, twice. Our race next year will involve us riding a series of (approximately) 30 minute efforts with (approximately) 30 minutes rest between them. One of the best ways to train for this is to have multiple entries to a time trial. We didn't know the other mixed tandem on the start list but hoped we could beat our previous two attempts and win the tandem category. It can be difficult to judge whether a bike starting a minute behind you are slower or faster. In this case there was no doubt at all as they flew past us just after the turn around on their way to breaking the course record. To compound things, we didn't manage to beat our previous best time over the course either. There were some positives to come out though, as there was only 9 seconds difference between our two runs and a very close power average. It has also given us a whole list of things we need to improve before this time next year.

Next on our agenda was a shower, snooze and brunch before doing our main home based tasks of the weekend including reconfiguring Roberta to be ready for the hilly tandem group ride on Sunday. By mid afternoon we were ready for some more food and another snooze. We had volunteered to spend between 1am and 5am that night manning the finish control for the Davis 600k. So after waking at about 9pm we set about packing the car with tasty snacks, a slow cooker containing vegetable soup and several warm blankets. We arrived in good time which was good as both the previous controllers had had a mix up with times and dates and were quite keen to get back home. We also found a friend who had returned from working at the Tobin control having a snooze on the ground in front of the tables. A true randonneur!

Sitting in a lonely car park in the early hours of the morning must be one of the least interesting or glamorous tasks associated with randonneuring. It is necessary however, and it seemed like a good way to pay some of debt to the organisation and organisers. After handing over to the next set of controllers, we got back in the car and headed back via Sunday breakfast (part 1). We had also gained another traveler in the form of John Guzik who had finished just before we left, and who we were giving a lift home. A quick shower and change later we were heading out to our meeting point for the tandem ride, in time for a hot drink and breakfast (part2).

There are few things as fine as riding in a group of similarly matched tandems, and we had a great day exploring new roads and catching up with people. It was interesting to us to be cycling when tired, but without having cycled 400km the previous day. The body may be physically capable, but getting warmed up and getting our heads in the right (mental) place is much harder than normal. It's something we will need to practice doing in the next year.

The boys let off some steam playing in the park while their stokers relax

After the ride we had lunch in Los Gatos and then back home for a well earned, but short, snooze. Then we set out on our bikes for our final engagement of the weekend - a steak dinner with friends. A great way to end a fantastic, and interesting, weekend.

Riding through the night: Santa Rosa 600km

Assorted notes from this weekend's 600km

Stuff that worked well

• Hydration
• According to the Garmin the temperature peaked at 113F, on the way out over Sulfur Banks road . In reality probably a little less, but still it was certainly hot. Lots of white clothing, having enough water with us to hydrate and also douse clothes, and keeping up with electrolytes right from the start all helped.
• Food
• No stomach troubles, ate regularly on the bike and at controls. Didn't have any of the low glucose grumps.
• Wish there was a formula to explain what it specifically was we did right but can't say!
• Particularly surprising as through a lot of Saturday we struggled to eat much of substance as it was so hot. Went back to getting more carbs we could from drinks.
• Used a couple gels on the way out, and Clif Shot Blocks heading back at the end. These are not our normal feeding strategy but good to tied us over low patches in long stages. Again, easier going in the heat too.
• From 4am onwards Sunday morning I had ongoing craving for hard boiled eggs!  Need more protein? (We did eat increasing amount of protein as it went on, but avoided Hammer Perpetuem after prior experiences.)
• Riding right through without a sleep stop
• We tried this a couple times before (2010, 2011) and both times came unstuck around 4-5am, and ended up stopping anyway (one time, lying down on the tarmac in a quiet lay-by, I was that pooched!). This time, we were much faster on the road so pulling through the small hours is much easier knowing you only have maybe 4 hours to go, rather than 10.
• 2x Fenix torches mounted on the aerobars as headlights.
• A new departure for us, having always ridden with a dynohub on prior bikes, I was in two minds how I'd get on with battery lights.
• At first they rattled around and I couldn't get them angled right, adding extra cable ties fixed both these problems (although doesn't win any awards for looks)
• Having one set to medium (quoted as 4 hour) and the other on high just used when needed worked great. Runtime on a pair of lithium cells each was enough to ride right through the night (8pm to 5am, minus 3 stops) just fine.
• Aerobars
• I switched from Profile Designs bars to USE Tula / Boost / Rock N Roll (I don't know why it has 3 names) clip ons, with Specialized extensions and the Shimano extension Di2 shifters. Compare to Profiles which are just "clip on and go", this setup is a lot more fiddly to get dialed in and comfortable on, I reckon I'm about 93% of the way there now with these. But the benefits are great: really low weight, and minimal design leaves the hoods and tops freely accessible so I have loads of different, useful, hand positions. Just what you need on long rides.

Stuff that didn't quite go as expected / hoped

• It's always the same on a 600: it was tougher than we expected!
• A ride report from several years back had referred to a tandem being first back, and (knowing the SRCC 200km is very tandem friendly) I'd sort of convinced myself this was a particularly tandem friendly route. It certainly has a couple stretches (first 70km, and up around Clear Lake) that I could hunker down on the aerobars and bash out miles, and I know about the "headline" big climbs, but overall there was just a lot more sections with sustained undulations than anticipated. Not that tough in the grand scheme of 600s, just a bit more than I'd mentally prepared for.
• Heat + headwind
• As mentioned above, pretty pleased with how we dealt with the heat, but it started to unravel when we left Lower Lake heading to Middletown. The wind seemed to cool us less than traveling through still air, and our speed dropped right away just as the remnants of the group we were riding with got ripped up by the wind.
• Finding a small group to work with around the whole ride.
• Normally we just go out and see what happens, but this time, as we were thinking to try and ride right through, we knew if we could get in a small but fast group it could be a big help.
• So the plan (such as it was) to start out fast, see who stayed with us (usual tandem situation), try and take it in turns for a bit and see if we could team with anyone to ride right through.
• As it turned out, we dragged about 20 bikes to the first control (right on its opening time) several of whom later packed as they'd spent too much too early on this hot day (sorry folks! That was not part of the plan). Then the big climb out of Hopland we were down to about 5; one of whom packed at the second control leaving us and 3 solos.
• It was great company while it lasted - especially enjoyed the banter on that big climb. But it turned out we were not really that matched a group, especially as the heat got up it affected everyone differently. Also to work well in front of a tandem takes fairly reasonable level of "club riding" skills and experience (i.e. holding a steady pace, no sudden speed changes) otherwise it causes more effort that gain. Around 200km (when the headwind hit; ironically when a group can have most benefit!) we got split up by the differing speeds, and so rode the last 400km on our own.
• Chain could do with a clean
• While Di2 is magicness of gear shifting, on this ride it had an annoying hesitation shifting from 5 down to 4 that got worse as the ride went on. Turns out even with magic, it still needs regular cleaning. (Especially when new, getting that sticky factory wax off the chain).
• Handlebar
• A mistake in ordering means Roberta has "standard" rather than "compact" FSA bars. Not a great issue on shorter rides, but I didn't use the drops anywhere near as much on this ride.

How to connect the spring inside an Ultegra Di2 9070 rear derailleur?

Cleaning our new tandem the other day, I noticed that the rear derailleur mechanism had a spring loose!

Amazingly the gears were shifting fine without it, but still, this doesn't look right?

This doesn't look right.

On closer inspection, I could see a "spare peg" (a cross head screw) in the mech, visible just behind the loose end of the spring here:

With a bit of careful pliering, I was able to hook the spring to said peg. This looks more natural when operating:

But the question I still have is, did I get that right? Answers on a postcard please! (or the comment box below will also work)