Wow, Jonathan, a reasoned response about recumbents...thanks
I too ride both, and I live in the mountains. My DF is a carbon fiber bike, and I was a lousy
climber on it, I don't own a body that climbs, but i only lost about 1.5 mph on the climb I do for
my work outs, 1000 ft, two miles. And that is on the Rans Stratus, I've yet to get the new Corsa out
on that hill because of weather. Time hasn't allowed me to train on the bents like I did on the DF
the year before.
On the upright I do have all my personal best rides. Lake Tahoe was almost a mile an hour faster
than on the bent tandem, the regular loop, about half a mile faster than the Stratus, but this is
all with ut the benefit of a lot of miles on the recumbents. On the DF, I struggled to keep a steady
18-20 on the flats of a long (40+mile) ride. On the Stratus with fairing, that was no problem. On
the Corsa, without the benefit of conditioning, I can maintain 23-25 with no fairing. Sprints are a
whole different thing, and again the bents will be faster for me than my DF. My trike is about the
same speed top end as the DF, but bad roads hurt its performance as much as big hills, it is the
slowest, but most fun over all.
it does come down to hills, training to spin to get up a hill. But that is the story for uprights as
well. Most of us weekend warriors can't stand a climb for two miles, so it is sit and spin or even
mash. Standing is great, it does give muscles a chance to recover, while others come into play,
assuming you have the cardio to support recovery of one muscle group while working the other.
I couldn't get a DF that I could stand to ride for more than about a metric century. Whatever I did
about mile 70 I would always wonder why am I doing this to myself. I own 5 bents, two trikes, one is
a tandem, three two wheelers, again one is a tandem, one is a SWB high racer the other a faired LWB
and any one of those I can do 100 miles and look at my watch and think..."oh, there is enough time
left in the day to do it again" This year will be double centuries and loaded tours, something that
just hurt me thinking about on the DF's, solo or tandem.