Found this from Charlotte's report of last year's 24:
We caught up with McNasty soon enough. .. To describe his style as smooth would be to lie horribly, though. His pedaling style produced a sort of lurching wobble on each revolution .
Having just had The Man Himself as my tandem stoker on this year's event, my feet hurt, my ar$e hurts, but my god so do my arms and shoulders from trying to keep the machine pointing vaguely in the right direction! It wasn't always a "lurching wobble" as Charlotte says, sometimes he kept me amused by changing into a wobbling lurch.
Charlotte also said of McNasty:
Although he was a force to be reckoned with in his day, he's very much the tortoise to the fast boys' hares in the MR24 nowadays.
True enough, compared to some of the younger riders, but he is still strong enough to push me round for a provisional 371 miles. Given our average age would entitle us to the Old Age Pension, I'm quite happy with how it turned out.
This was my first TT and I didn't really know what to expect. As one of only two tandem crews, our grip on the Silver Medal tightened when the other crew caught us for a minute within the first three miles. Oh well, at that point I decided we were going to be lanterne rouge, so I just settled into a "let's get on with this" mode. It gradually dawned on me that it didn't matter how hard we rode, we weren't going to finish until 14.21 on Sunday. McNasty, to be fair, was a great riding companion and it occurred to me that this must be a very lonely ride on a solo. He never complained or disagreed once: Me, "George, should we stop this time round?" George, "Aye, if ye want." Me, "George, will we just batter on this time round?" George, "Aye, if ye want." Me, "George, I'm going to drop it to the middle ring now." George, "Aye, if ye want." etc etc
We seemed to be lucky that neither of had a bad patch or suffered any visits from Mr Sleepy. We were supported fantastically well by Mrs eck and Megajoules, so a huge Thank You to both of them. And Chapeau to Mr Megajoules for riding through a bad first half and finishing strongly. If I'm interpreting the results correctly, he was the only rider who rode further in the second 12 hours than in the first.
Given that we'd had only three pre-nuptial trial rides together, totalling no more than 150 miles, McNasty and I seemed to get away with it. Slightly disappointed that our distance is less than 3k short of 600 - our computer showed 608k after 24 hours but, hey ho.
I don't remember any problems with traffic, certainly no deliberate aggression. The marshalling and encouragement on the road were fantastic. The sight of riders approaching in the night was quite awesome, especially when two or three were close together - more like a scene from Star Wars. The weather wasn't too dreadful - the rain didn't start until daylight on Sunday, and only lasted about three or four hours.
Didn't meet as many audax types as I expected, but it was good to have a quick chat with Ian H, and to meet our pals from the Emerald Isle.
Yes, still a bit tender today, but I'm glad I gave it a go. So, George, 600k next year?