Tandem standards

The following article explains how to calculate tandem standards.  There is also an online calculator which does the job for you - go to the calculator and click the "tandem" button.

Tandem standards are calculated in the following way.

• Calculate the two standards for the individual members of the crew from the tables.
• Take the average of the two standards
• Reduce this by 10%

NOTE 1: Do not take the average of the two ages - this will not give the right result (and will result in the crew being given a tougher standard!)

Example: A 25 mile with a mixed crew consisting of a man, aged 52, and a woman, aged 48:

• Man's standard - age 52 - 1:08:17
• Women's standard - age 48 - 1:12:58
• Average of the two - 1:10:38
• Less 10% - 1:03:34

NOTE 2: The tandem standard is meant to provide fair competition between tandems.  Under VTTA rules it should not be used as a basis for competition between tandems and solos.  (When we reviewed the standards we verified that the above method seems to work well for competition between tandems - we did not attempt to verify whether or not it could give a good comparison between tandems and solos.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that the 10% deduction would give slightly too much advantage to the tandems.)

In the coming days we will provide an online calculator and a downloadable spreadsheet to help with these calculations.