Has full details of a freestyle day hosted by SWUM in Exeter on November 1st 2008.
If your a British unicyclist who wants to improve their freestyle skills and / or is thinking of entering the 2009 British Freestyle comp or any other unicyle performance related event this is the day for you. With training and coaching from an international unicycle choreographer, street and free style competiors and international freestyle judges you wilbe able to polish a work in progress or get ideas to start working on a routine.
There will be a non competitive showcase at the end of the day to give pople a chance to try out ideas they have been working on in front of an audience and get feed back from freestyle judges.
See you there.
Sarah Miller
South West Unicycle meets
I keep gettinng calls about this from the festival office. thy can;t get their heds round what will be going on… I may need some local riders for a photo call before nov 1st to go in local press.
For people coming a long way for this.
I’m sorry but I can’t have the community hall for pizza in the evening or over night, so you will need to sort out alterntive accomadation if you need it. Let me know if you need pointers. There is a YHA and a Globe backpacker hostel in exeter. Also standard sort of travel inn / holiday inn express places and numerous B&Bs.
For Jan 3rd and our hockey event we DO have the community hall booked already.
Yes ist still on. time table to include.
Group routine in a day.
Pairs workshops - no partner required.
Level tests.
mounts workshop.
hopping skills workshop.
How to put a freestyle routine together talk.
Silly games.
just a bit of hockey.
Also enough space round the edges for people to practise , chat and catch up with friends.
MUNI ride onteh sunday following teh Freestyle day.
If your interested in joining a few people for a muni ride somewhere in devon , let me know - transport will be required, I have no spare spaces.
Location not yet fixed, going to see who wants to come and how they ride before picking, BUT it’ll be not too far from Exeter ( with in 30 miles).
I’m still VERY tempted. I’ve half promised to be somewhere else, but I could always forget… Built up my nice new muni yesterday
I’ll see you on the Saturday anyway - haven’t ridden my 20" for ages.
Be good to see you Rob. do you mind dong the pedal replacement workshop ( again) at the beginning for those that need plastic pedals?
Mike
any body else want to admit to coming along?
I still have a spare ticket for a free lunch on friday… your chance to recieve a cheque from Exeter City Council on behalf of the SW unicycle meets club.
Yes we’ll definitely be coming, the kids have been performing a unicycle music hall act at a local theatre all this week, with pianist backing, in a Sherlock Holmes play. I think they’ll want to show this routine off and then increase the technical skills. They performed faultlessly all week resulting in very happy cast and parents
Rich has just confirmed that he is happy to drive us there so I think that will mean that there will be me, Rich, Magnus, Kieran, Will and possibly more from Southampton woo! (but Toni and Danny are likely to be better than all of us put together now…:o )
I’m looking forward to it I will try not to get too drunk tonight… Do you want us to bring anything? Hockey sticks/music/etc? Hope today’s lunch goes well. See you soon!
Bring hockey sticks, I recon you could get in an hours hockey. 11-12 if you don;t mind missing warm up and are quick off the mark.
MUNI ride on Sunday 2nd.
for any one local or satying locally overnight.
Meet at 10am at abbeyford woods Car park ( just north of Okehampton)
for a bit of a muni explore. 3 way marked trails puls north shore area. close to BUC 2009 site.
AFAIK the woods have no toilets, snack bar or first aiders so, be prepared.
It was great to see lots of people trying new stuff.
If you have any comments you would be willing to share with the organization who part funded Saturdays meet - Exeter Autumn Festival - would you please post them here or e-mail them to me on sarah dot miller @ unicyclist dot com .
Any comments good or bad about what you got out of the day would be appreciated. We need to prove we have had feed back and evaluation from participants.
Thanks for organising it Sarah, you did a really good job! And thanks to those who ran workshops, and everyone else who made it all good fun, was great to see people again and nice to have a different theme to the usual uni meet - especially as most of the ones I go to now are hockey tournaments…!
Hopefully enough people now have enough knowledge and confidence to be able to put a group routine together at their own clubs, so can we see a group freestyle competition at the next BUC?!
Looking forward to another one (if possible!).
Edit: P.S. I didn’t get a black eye in the end! The unicycle to face incident has only created invisible bruising!
Yes it was a good day, even for somebody who’s not really that into freestyle or hockey. I tried a few new things - still hopeless at hopping, getting better at backwards, turns out I can do a weird hand-pushoff-twizzly-pirouetty thing that I never would have thought of trying!
For me the best thing to come out of the day was Catherine twice managing 2 revolutions unsupported (and several times managing 1-1.5 revolutions).
She’s been at the stage for a while now where she really needed to let go, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She realised earlier in the day that learning to catch the unicycle as she fell off would make her feel happier about falling off, and hence more able to let go. So she practised that, got the hang of it, and then found the confidence to let go of my arm.
Seeing the joy on her face as she fell off after riding a few feet unsupported brought back memories of the weekend that I learnt to ride, reminding me that riding 1.5-2 revolutions really is the point when you start to think “I can do this”. It was a big morale and confidence booster.
I had a small achievement of my own, as well. I managed 7 steps of unsupported wheelwalking and found it feeling more solid than it’s felt before.
There was a couple about our age who spent the whole afternoon up on the balcony practising, her on a rather pretty British Racing Green Pashley 20" (the second best colour for a frame, IMO) and him on a 16" that he was obviously mis-sold. They were doing remarkably well for the amount of time that they said they’d spent practising so far. I hope and expect to see them again. I directed them here, anyway.
woo! (but Toni and Danny are likely to be better than all of us put together now…:o )
Glad it wasn’t too disfiguring!