The Tandem 1200

 (My notes from our trip, the preparation and the actual, to possibly turn into a book…)

 The Tandem 1200

A few years ago, Steve turned to me and said, 'I'd like to do an epic tandem trip, Lands End to John O'Groats' (aka LEJOG).  

We're British (Steve) and American (Katherine) so spend our time in two countries, the UK and the US.  We're in our early 60s and working up to being fit with a focus on establishing a fitness foundation for our 'next phase' of life.  Steve wanted to do this for his 60th birthday - time is moving on and if we're going to do something like this, it's probably about time.

We’re both in our 60s, fairly active, but not what I would call athletic.  We like to cycle, kayak and hike, with a bit of yoga thrown in the mornings.  Fitness has become more rather than less important as we’ve moved into this particular phase of our lives because it feels like we need to put a foundation in place for the next 30+ years (fingers crossed).  If we want to be able to do the things we love in our 70s, 80s and 90s (?!), the physical things will only get more difficult and we’d better start training and put in a foundation for it now.  

We've been tandeming for 15 years or so now and have done about 10,000 miles in that time.  Short daytime trips, quick morning blasts to get the blood flowing, longer overnight trips, multidays in Tuscany and even the UK Coast to Coast.  Our longest day was about 70 miles and we're pretty comfortable pedalling anywhere from 25 to 40 miles in a day, depending on hills.  We have a touring tandem in the UK for long distances with minor off roading on gravel tracks and a road bike in the US where we ride the very flat roads of Florida.

When Steve said he wanted to do LEJOG, I didn't even know what it was.  After much research and reading, I've come to understand it is an 900 - 1200ish mile ride from Lands End at the bottom of England to the top of Scotland at a place called John O'Groats.  Some people (this will not be us) do this trip in about 10 days, others (like us) take a longer time to do it.  There are a variety of routes of varying distances and difficulty.  Knowing a bit more about it, we decided it did sound like an epic tandem trip and that we would do it!

Life gets interrupted by things like pandemics.  Plan disruption for a few years now, but 2023 is our newest target.

The thinking in choosing the 1200ish miles of LEJOG is that a) it will force us to train because the idea of

setting out without being fairly ready was also fairly frightening, b) not only would we be fairly fit when

we started, we’d be really fit by the end of it and c) what a great opportunity to explore the length of

England and Scotland in depth, at a level of detail you seldom if ever see by car.  This would also be the

basis for expanding further into other long-distance tandem journeys in Europe and America moving forward. 

And all of that was in addition to Steve just wanting to do this for his 60th birthday.

Beyond the idea of a big, exciting trip with lots of planning and then the big tour, there are some other reasons we'd like to do this:

- Seeing the countries up close and in detail.  When you tour in a car, everything whizzes by so quickly.  When you pedal between 10 and 15 miles per hour (and sometimes even slower), there's time to see everything.  Rather than racing from the bottom to the top, we want to see the entire country up close as we ride by.

- Getting really, really fit.  There are some folks who use LEJOG itself to get fit, e.g., start pedaling and use the trip itself to get fit, riding 40-60 miles a day.  You would get fit, but that sounds like purgatory.  The goal is to get fit before starting out and make the hard bits (of which there seem to be a few - Cornwall, Scotland) a bit more comfortable.  If we can do 40+ miles a day over 30+ days, we will have achieved a level of fitness which, if maintained, can set us up for our future years.

This blog follows that journey from the initial idea through to its culmination three years later and, yes, we're going to do it on a tandem...