Sharon's first 100K ride ever!
Sharon completed her first ever 100km ride on Sunday. We set out from home on a rough approximation of the BC Randonneurs 100K Populaire route. Skipping the start at the University of Victoria we headed for the Mohka House coffee shop to get fuelled up. We then followed the 100K Vic Pop route along the south end of the peninsula to Mattick’s Farm where we stopped for a bathroom break. Cruising up to Sidney we stopped for a bite of lunch before looping around the top of the Saanich Peninsula and dropping down towards home. We got a bit “creative” with the route so we could reach 100kms without heading to the official ride end point at the university.
Ride data - click for bigger...
Although the GPS data above is a bit less than 100kms we did ride the full distance. We just started and stopped recording data on the bike path near our house so as not to give away the exact location of the Lazy Rando HQ!…=-) Overall the ride was fun and a big accomplishment for Sharon. Riding 100kms opens a lot of doors for seeing cool things in our area and makes a reasonable daily ride on a bike tour.
Sharon wondering when I'll put a Brooks saddle on the tandem for her?
We need to tweak the back end of the tandem for Sharon’s long distance comfort. She wants to move the Brooks saddle from her commuter bike to the tandem and then she’ll break in another Brooks on the commuter 10kms at a time. The straight bars and bar ends worked, but we’ll do some scheming to see what other bar options we can come up with that may work better for her. In general our Bike Friday tandem worked awesome for us and was a fun bike to pedal while enjoying the scenery of our island home.
Garmin Forerunner 310XT...
I threw a Garmin fitness GPS on Sharon’s bars so she could keep track of our ride stats. It’s a handy unit because I can install it on any bike in about 10 seconds and I don’t have to bother with a bike computer the other 95% of the time when I don’t care how far or fast I went.
Garmin Etrex Vista Cx...
I had the 100K Vic Pop route loaded into my Garmin mapping GPS up front on my bars to navigate us.
Rando Beer!
The weather was great. It started off cloudy and cool, but ened up sunny and warm as the day progressed. Nice day to be out on a bike…=-)
The Lazy Rando Blog... 
If you upload your Garmin data to Strava, you can choose to disguise your start.end points with Strava. Nice job on the 100k!
Thanks. I can edit the file in Garmin software as well, but it’s just easier to not have to bother.
Great job Sharon!
I know I felt great when I finished my first populaire waaaaaay back in the dark old days of last September 2011 😉 You defintely deserve to be proud of yourself!
Hoever, I would be geting on Vik about this “No Brooks for Sharon business…” Not cool at all! 😉
I have a couple of questions:
1. How is the gearing on your tandem for climbing? I see lots of tandems on the brevet’s I have done so far, and they all seem to fly up the hill. I would assume you set your Raspberry Rocket with brevets/climbing in mind, but I was curious as to the gear choice.
2. I saw on MG’s “Chasing Mailboxes”blog recently that timing is very important with a tandem, ie standing for a climb, changing gears, etc. You two must be old hats at this by now, but how was that aspect on your brevet?
Happy Riding!
Ty
@TY – Thanks. Sharon did a great job and 100K is a long way from the zero biking she did 3yrs ago. 100kms is bike touring range!
Sharon has a Brooks saddle on her commuter bike and she had a Brooks saddle on the tandem which she had me remove and she replaced it with a plastic saddle of her choosing. Now that she is riding longer distances she wants the Brooks from her commuter on the tandem and she’ll break in the Brooks B17 that was on the tandem originally on her commuter bike 10kms at a time. I don’t dictate what bike interface components she uses. I may suggest something, but she has to determine what she wants to try and how it works for her.
Our gearing is a straight up MTB 3 x 8. Nothing special. We ride in the big ring 80% of the time. We use the middle for steep climbs and only drop to the granny ring for crazy steep hills. The tandem was geared as a touring bike as opposed to a road bike. Although so is my Rando bike. I think bike gearing gets over thought most of the time and people have way more gears than they need. I rode the entire 200K a couple weeks ago as a 1×9. I definitely don’t need the big ring ever…I’m not going to pedal at 45kph+!! I will use the granny ring a couple times a year, but I could simply install a wider range cassette at the back and get a lower gear that way with a single front ring.
I don’t see Sharon wanting to ride more than 100kms at the present so other than populaires she won’t be doing any rando events. Our next move in tandem progression will be back to back 100K rides up island to another town with a hotel overnight and then back.
I don’t have to tell Sharon we are changing gears. I just shift and it happens. She’s not a powerhouse so if I let up on the pedals the derailleurs can shift just fine. We don’t stand to climb. I don’t stand to climb on my single rando bike either. It wastes too much energy. We only get off the saddle when we are coasting downhill and we don’t have to let the other person know. The only thing I do is call out a bump if we are going to hit something significant so Sharon can be ready for it.