Originally Posted by
Syscrush
Slogging my guts out for an hour with the e-assist turned off, I'm covering about 10 km. But the aerobic workout is really serious. For establishing a baseline fitness, I think that this has some merit - even if I look like an absolute doofus out there. So far, the kids are tolerating it OK. It feels good being able to finally get out and really work hard on a bike again.
I get some really good training on our tandem which probably weighs 325 lbs. all up. The biggest difference is in the crank inertial load which basically means that there's always pedal pressure if we're not descending. That really gets to my legs, or did before they got used to it. There's an elite who used to come out on our hilly group rides in the winter with his lab in a trailer. The dog loved it of course and he got a decent workout. It's totally possible for you to do climbing rides with that setup as long as the slope doesn't exceed your gearing. We did a 154 mile 10,000' climb on the tandem in our late 60s.. My stoker puts out 1/2 my watts.