Revolve24 – A 24 hour endurance ride on a tandem

by Simon Tuck · 06/03/2018

Revolve24 – A 24 hour endurance ride on a tandem

Simon Tuck

I’ve taken part in Revolve24, a 24 hour race at Brands Hatch, for the last 3 years as part of a team relay. We’ve had reasonable success finishing in the top 3 for our class each year. I wrote about a previous visit here. This year I wanted to do the whole 24 hours, and what better way to do that than on a tandem!

I’ll provide some updates along the way, but first I’ll set out my plan here so it’s real and there’s no turning back. There’s two very important things you need to enter a race on a tandem. Firstly there’s the tandem, and then you need someone equally insane to consider sitting on the other seat and hopefully turning the pedals.

Hurdle number one seems to have been relatively easy to get over. Having previously ridden and enjoyed one of his Circe Helios tandems, I approached Richard Loke and told him how hilly Brands Hatch is and that I’d like to borrow a tandem to ride around there for 24 hours. He didn’t even raise an eyebrow but agreed in principle that he can provide something suitable and we’re going to go through the finer points a bit nearer the time.

I’m no stranger to the Circe Helios Tandem. It’s nice and light which should help up Druid’s Hill

The second hurdle was a little trickier. I’ve been at Revolve24 for the last 3 years with a varying bunch of riders, but there’s been two constants over those 3 years. One is a very strong, fast rider so that counts him out. However, the other guy rides a similar pace to mine, and also completed last year’s event as a soloist. Unfortunately it turned out he can’t make it to this year’s ride so I had to have a rethink.

I’ve been living in Cambridge for the last 18 months because my Wife is training to be a Vicar. Whilst I’ve been here I’ve been going out on Saturday rides that leave at 0730 from a café called Espresso Library. The owner of Espresso Library is an infamous local time trialist and hill climber, so the café is very bike friendly and has room inside to park your bike.

This photo of Espresso Library is courtesy of TripAdvisor

I’m always early for things. I particularly like to be early for rides so that I can make sure all my kit is on comfortably and my tyres are pumped up and chain lubed. Every Saturday at Espresso Library, this one other guy is nearly always there before me. Annoyingly he’s normally ridden nearly an hour as a warm up too. Although he does a lot more miles than I do, Hoppy rides at a similar speed to me. I had a feeling he’d be mad enough to be up for the challenge and he was.

Revolve24 has a mass start, I think we’ll probably start from the pits on the tandem!

I’m going to write a few blog posts regarding the Revolve24. The next one will focus on some of our preparations. Ian still hasn’t ridden on a tandem yet!! We’ll need to start considering pace and upping our (my) fitness. We’ll also have to consider essentials that we’ll need, how we’ll feed and drink, and what spares and other things like lights we need to take.

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