The last weekend, 16 unicyclists participated in a fantastic 24 Hour offroad endurance race near Toronto called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. This was three teams of 5 plus a solo rider, Brian MacKenzie who posted a bit about his experience riding 100km in this thread.
This year, Beau and I were the only ones flying out from California but we were lucky to have Kris join us from Vancouver, as well as Joey, Ben and The Dan from Boston, Andy from Minnesota, Irene from Washington, Frank from Virginia, Vincent from Quebec City, plus quite a few local riders (sorry if I missed anyone!)
This truly is the best 24 hour race due to the small size, great course, team cabins, hot meals and showers and general ambiance created by the organizers and all the riders. And this year was even better than last because we had great weather. Unicycle Team 1 and 2 both had mechanical difficulties that were a real pain for some of the riders, but other than that, it was a really great race. Ben was a true star, flatting at about the 2km mark, walking back, patching his tire, and going out and doing the whole lap - in the wee hours of the morning. Jeff carried his unicycle 4km while running on one lap, and further the next.
Carl, Sara and Jeff pre-rode the course a week early at about 2 hours per lap and reported that it was longer and harder than last year. Sure enough our times were a little slower, but Kris and Ryan still managed sub-1-hour laps which is pretty incredible for 13km with 350m of climbing, all on dirt, mostly twisty singletrack. Probably the most amazing time was 1:05:26 done by Kris from 11:53pm to 12:58am. The combination of skill and conditioning required to do something like this is … incredible. I created an excel spreadsheet from the info on the website. I colored the unicycle team rows so they are easy to see and for my team, colored each persons laps differently. If someone from the other teams wants to update it with this info, email me the file and I’ll stick it up for everyone. I wore my new GPS/heart rate monitor on my first lap - the heart rate graph shows I was working hard.
GPS/heart rate/elevation/speed info
Even though the race was a full 24 hours, plus some time before and after, the rest of the weekend was great too. It started the moment we walked out of customs. Even though it was almost 11pm, Pete and Maggie cheerfully drove us to the racecourse (the first of 3 round trips they took to the race course!). We arrived at 12:15am and all the bikers seemed to be asleep, but the campfire was roaring and the unicyclists were up, telling stories, drinking beer, having a blast. Just before we went to bed at 2am (luckily only 11pm to our bodies), Beau and Joey were playing fullmoon frisbee with a black frisbee. Darren Bedford also came out to the race loaded with 4 huge double pizza boxes - a great Canadian invention. After the race, the Groves hosted a fantastic party at their house with a huge barbeque. The beer cooler was provided by Darren and you have to check out the photos to see it.
Here’s a list of fun activities I can remember from the weekend besides unicycle racing: Ultimate frisbee, Disc golf at the race course, disc golf at Centennial Park on Monday, the 500 frisbee game, slack rope, pogo stick, juggling, diabolo, FIREWORKS, listening to great stuff from theDan.com, plus massive food/drink consumption.
Here are the first couple of photo links:
57 of my photos
Irene’s photos
If you’re interested, my photos from 2004.
Thanks you so much Pete, Maggie, Darren, Carl and everyone. Let’s do it again next year!
—Nathan
Well done guys