ButchA

Earlier today, I talked my wife into going on a short 6 mile bike ride looping through a bunch of the neighborhood side streets. I lowered the seat on my old Schwinn Alum Comp Mtn bike, and to my surprise, it fit her to a "T". She had no problems with it and was real comfortable on it. Then I gave her my silver Bell bike helmet, which she adjusted to her head. And as crazy as this sounds... I found an old beatup, leftover, bike helmet that my daughter wore back in the day. I ripped out all the foam padding/liner to make it fit my big fat head, and well... it worked (sort of). My wife's safety is always my #1 concern, so she wore the good helmet.

On the return trip, we decided to stop briefly and use the camera on her smartphone to snap a photo of each of us. Then through Paintshop Pro (i.e. a poor man's version of Photoshop), I downloaded the photos, cropped them, tweaked them, and merged them together.

Meet my lovely wife Margaret on my old Schwinn Mtn bike that is all setup for her. Even though it's a men's bike from Wal-Mart (19" frame?) it fits her perfectly. I'm on my C&V "old school" '85 Fuji Del Rey road bike, with the awful looking kid's helmet w/o any foam liner.



Anyway, we did the short 6 mile bike ride in a very slow and very gentle 38:10, but we had fun! I might have to get her a nice ladies bike and see if she wants a comfort bike, a road bike, or just keep riding my old Schwinn Mtn bike.... Does your spouse ride with you?

MinnMan

kudos.

For years, my wife wasn't at all interested - she had a bike in the garage with 10 years of rust. Then, when we lived for a time in Canberra, she started commuting on a bike because we had no car and walking took too long. We bought a cheap $250 Trek hybrid down at the local shop. Towards the end of our stay there, she started taking rides for fun on her own - that's easy to motivate when there's a kangaroo reserve a few miles down the cycle path.

When we returned to the states, she brought her Aussie bike home with her and has ridden some ever since. Last year she upgraded to a nice Cannondale Quick (sweet bike). She rides chiefly alone, and not as often as I ride, but I think her maximum ride to date is 50 miles.

She will ride with me, BUT

*she will not ride on roads - trails only.
*she will only ride in nice weather
*she will not try to ride fast

So now and again we ride together. We ride at her pace when we do.

This saturday we took a 35 mile trail ride to a nature reserve out past Lake Minnetonka. My HR did not go above 100 for more than a couple of minutes, but it was a very pleasant ride.

B. Carfree

We've been cycling together for thirty-two years. For the past twenty-seven years, many of our "fun" rides have been on tandems with my wife riding captain. It's a great way to do one's "daily maintenance" (term coined by Dan Savage, relationship advice columnist extraordinaire, referring to the notion that people owe it to their partners to stay in shape).

digibud

We ride together nearly all the time. Sometimes I'll do a second solo ride because I can ride further and faster but on a typical 30mi ride I will "push" ahead a few times, leaving her behind for a few hundred yards. During that time she will do her own version of a high intensity interval while I do mine. We're over 60 so it's not like we are competitive racers but we ride hard - for us. I enjoy riding with her much more than simply riding alone and don't have many/any others in my age group to ride with regularly.

FBOATSB

No She thought a guy my age riding a bike was the dumbest thing in the world. But we both ride an indoor machine we bought after my spine surgery But she seems to respect my determination and I am getting better.

Retro Grouch 

Yes. For a long time (20 years +) my wife only rode with me on a tandem. Eventually we got her her own bike but she still didn't ride it very much. After my injuries we bought a series of recumbents including a tandem recumbent bicycle. We have since sold that and purchased a pair of recumbent tricycles that can be linked together to form a tandem. Today we mostly ride separately, she on her tricycle and me on my SWB recumbent. She is also comfortable going out to ride by herself. We are planning to go to the Midwest Recumbent Rally in Stevens Point Wi next month but we haven't decided whether to ride separately or to bring both trikes to link together.

bruce19

Yes for the past 10 yrs. We average 100 mi./wk.

tigat

My wife rides with me 4 to 6 times a month, from March to October, with distances ranging from 15 to 50 miles a pop. It will be more often if I am rehabbing from a crash (so she can keep her eye on me and let me know if she thinks I'm pushing too hard or not riding carefully enough) or if she has set a goal for the season.

This year her target is an unsupported century in September. I did my bit by fracturing a couple of ribs and collapsing a lung last weekend, so July and August are going to be couple's months.

Biker395 

Not a chance.

winston63 

My wife and I will ride together fairly regularly. I need to slow it down as she prefers a leisurely pace, but she's not afraid to ride up to about 30 km or so which isn't bad at all. She's got a bike she loves (An older Trek 7.2Fx) which I keep in good running shape.

FBOATSB

Way to take one for the team

GlennR

No... she'd be an anchor.

ButchA

Ouch... I don't DARE say that! My wife would never get on a bike again and ride with me. Granted, we did that ridiculously slow 6 mile ride, but at least we did it and she enjoyed it. I had to be very careful with the old Fuji, as I'd leave her in the dust with one stomp of a pedal! I did shift up to the 52T chainring once, and had to shift back down, stop and wait for her. When she caught up to me, she had an expression like, "Would you please wait up?". Then I quickly looked at the Schwinn Mtn bike, and she was on the middle chainring and the 3rd gear in the back. When I suggested she shift to a faster gear or at least up onto the 3rd chainring, she just replied, "No, I'm okay..." and maintained that leisurely 9.5 mph pace.

doug59

To borrow some of MinnMan's quote:

*she will not ride on roads - trails only.
*she will not try too ride fast

But's that's OK with me. I ride just about everyday. We will usually go out on weekends (maybe twice a week). It's a more casual ride, but hey...it's fun because we are doing something fun together. A lot of times we will stop for lunch during our ride, or a bite to eat afterward.

MinnMan

borrow away - I just wish my borrowed text didn't have typos! (I meant "..to ride fast", not "...ride too fast" and certainly not "too ride fast")

Also, responding to what ButchA wrote - I more or less agree, but I also won't give any advice about how to pedal, which gear to use, etc. I'm just glad she's out riding with me and she can ride at whatever pace and in whatever style suits her. My wife does not *want* to be faster, she just wants to enjoy the ride. And I can ride fast (or what I call fast) on other rides.

curbtender

Good thread. My wife will ride with me but she has found a few limits. The number one being that she won't ride a tandem again. Something about having a butt pointed at you...

MinnMan

I want to expand on this part also. One of the pleasures of riding with my wife is showing her parts of our area that she didn't know and that i didn't know before I started riding. The Twin Cities metro is full of hidden gems - really lovely places that increase my appreciation of my adopted home. Some of them aren't accessible by trails, but many of the gems ARE the trails themselves (there are tons of them - Minnesota is getting famous for its unbelievable trail network).

So my point is, by riding with my wife and showing her part of what I see when I'm out riding, she understands better why I am so enamored of riding. I can tell her about a ride she *wasn't* on and know some things about the geography and the experience which she wouldn't have appreciated if she hadn't been out there herself.

tigat

Great, great post!

Yesterday we hiked on a trail that overlooked one of the epic climbs on the front range, one that I have done countless times, and she has done once (her goal from the summer of 2012). Looking down at the winding turns, her eyes lit up and she said, ""I did that?"

Context, conversation, and a shared adventure that does not involve one of the kids--these are the things that enrich a 34 year long journey together and the reason why I'll trade a high intensity, push the limits ride for a 100 bpm heart rate cruise any day.

JanMM

We've been riding together since we met in 1978. Most of our together-riding over the last 15 years has been on tandems. Last year we rode 1400 tandem miles and we may beat that this year.

donheff

We always rode together until I broke my shoulder a few weeks ago. Now she is riding on her own, although I am on call if she gets a flat since she relies on me for that.

lphilpot

One 6.x mile ride and a couple of 1.x milers over the last 5 years, so effectively no. I keep on asking when appropriate but I don't realistically expect a change. When I got my "first" bike (since high school) she asked right there in the LBS "what about mine?" So we (gladly) bought two bikes that day but only one's been used since then. Hope Springs eternal though... I'd love to ride with her, or my daughter.

John_V 

Yes! My wife and I ride together quit often. We also go to the MUP together and do separate solo rides.

John E

For the first three years of our marriage we lived car-free in west Los Angeles, in a little apartment a mile and a half south of the UCLA campus. We bicycled, walked, or rode transit everywhere, other than occasionally using my grandfather's car. (Our apartment was conveniently located halfway between my maternal grandparents' house and campus.)

We bought our first car, a year-old 1976 Pinto Squire ("woody" vinyl decal) station wagon, when we bought our first house. The house, a formerly beautiful Spanish style duplex from the late 1920s, was a real dump of a fixer-upper, so we needed some way to transport drywall, lumber, and other building materials. After I suffered a concussion and fractured collarbone later that year, courtesy of a left-crossing motorist, my wife gradually lost her taste for cycling in traffic, so I can relate to those who responded "only on trails." I am sure she worries about me when I am out on the road.

MRT2

Yes. We ride together. I stopped riding altogether between the ages of 18 and 32. My wife never stopped riding and though not as much of a technology and gear enthusiast as I am (and doesn't put as many miles as I have in the last 3 or 4 years), she has been the more consistent rider over the years than I have been.

ButchA

Wow... Lots of great replies! Looking back, my wife and I used to ride a lot way back when our daughters (now full grown, on their own, one's married) were kids. I am just glad my wife Margaret went with me on that 6 mile ride. She went on an extremely short 1.5 mile ride around our block a few days ago, just to get the feel of a bike after so many years.

Anyway, that same photo that I uploaded, I also put on Facebook so all my friends and family could see that we were out riding. My one daughter (who's old bike helmet I cannibalized ) posted a comment, "Gee, Mom, you look so enthused! LOL!" And then my wife replied, "I wish he would have taken the picture in the beginning and not when we were almost done. I was tired!". Now just privately to all of you (don't tell my wife!), I sat there reading that Facebook comment and was thinking, "Tired? Seriously?" But wisely didn't say a word...