I’m definately doing the 24hr race that’s coming up in April I think and I’m getting a little worried about my lack of preparation. I’ve emailed Gabe telling him that I’d love to join him in the race (he showed some interest in participating) but he hasn’t got back to my. I’ll either be doing it in a 2 man team with Gabe or solo (which would still be great fun). I’ve bee doing my general riding on weekdays for short distances just for fun and riding for about 3-4 hours on weekends on Mt. Cootha but I’m going to try to start some real training. I’m pretty busy with bands at school and general schoolwork so I don’t have all that much time for training but what sorts of things should I do?
I’m not going to take the 24hr too seriously. I’ll try my hardest of course and I’ll be completely buggered by the end of it but I’ll just be having fun. I have absolutely no idea how hard it’ll be because I’ve only ever done a 12hr on my bike in a 4 man team. I was going as hard as I could in that one and was tired at the end but I don’t know what it’ll be like on a uni.
Can anyone suggest any good things to do for training? I’ve got a gym membership this year, so if there are any muscles I particularly need to build up please let me know.
Congratulations to “Team Cyclops” for competing in a 24hr last year (I just finished reading about it) and to Joe Marshall for going solo last year.
try doing some really long rides at the weekend, like 7-8 hours plus. If you can cope with it not being so fun do them on quite easy offroad terrain, so you’re not stopping to hop and jump about all the time, try to keep a consistent speed in between breaks. Maybe towards the end of a ride put in some more tricky stuff to see how you cope with it when you’re tired. If you’ve got lights (which I presume you have given the 24 hour race) then go riding in the evenings a couple of times a week if you can.
In the actual race, don’t ride too hard, especially not when you’re tired, it’s better to go a little bit slower and not crash than to go flat out but crash.
In general, I usually work on the rule that if I’m okay doing half the time / distance as an ordinary ride, I’ll survive the race okay.
As for the gym, it probably depends on how fit you are at the moment, compared with how good your balance is. You might be able to get fitter quicker at the gym, but you won’t be improving the riding, unless you’re a really good rider already, you’ll probably be better off spending the time riding hard instead.
Also, bear in mind that as a solo unicyclist you’ll be instantly hardcore however much you do, so don’t worry about taking big breaks in the middle or whatever. Oh and you should try and beat my a bit more than 70 miles that I did. (which shouldn’t be too hard given I crashed and took a bit over 12 hours for that lap).
the ‘European Unicycling Tour’ webpages contains a page dedicated to the training for it: http://www.outtech.com/Unicycle/EUT/Training.htm
I would believe that those trainings goal give you an idea what the lower limit of your training should look like
I suspect given he’s got 5 or 6 weeks left, that might be a bit optimistic? Also bear in mind that offroad long distance is very different to on-road long distance, especially if there’s technical riding involved. Personally I find it easier to ride for longer times off road, although I obviously go much slower and can’t go as far.
gosh, that must have been incredibly dull riding round that little track for ever and ever. Quite impressive nonetheless.
Hasn’t that record been beaten yet by the way, it doesn’t seem particularly far, especially given the long distance coker people around now? I know I could do well over 100 miles offroad and there’s a lot of people fitter than me around, like most of the people on the EUT. Although I guess most long distance riders aren’t going for the record so are riding on roads or on rough terrain rather than on flat running tracks which means they’re not likely to do quite so much.
Andrew, going solo for 24 hours of offroad is going to be a little tiring,
so I think you should train with long rides. Ha ha. Seriously, although it’s
the opposite of what we did, I recommend you go easy and consider it a 24
hour ride rather than any kind of race. Take breaks every lap and see if you
can just keep going for the whole time. As someone else said, you’re
automatically a hardcore maniac the second you leave the starting line! Even
if you end up on a 2-person team, it’s still going to be incredible.
Obviously, have some kind of support team to cook for you and cheer you on
and most importantly, take photos!
I don’t think so either.
Those ~174 miles were done on a 26 incher and not on a coker.
A quick calculations shows that he averaged 30.8 secs per 100m
(for the full 24hours). I think in track racing (24" wheels, 125mm cranks, so the crank ratio is sortof comparable) you’re among the fast ones if you do your 100m below 16s.
But keeping that speed up for hours and hours, … that’s insane.
If you care about your mental health, it safer to ride offroad
Andrew, I have one word for you: Massage. Hear me now and believe me later.
OK, two words: Massage and Ibuprofen.
And forget about the second you leave the starting line - you’re already hardcore for thinking about it!
I’ve only done 5-man teams for 24 hours, and I’m probably a year away from doing a lap on a uni. Tag-team, let alone solo, is truly hardcore!
Have fun! And Mark Twight was right: sometimes having fun can really really hurt, but sometimes really, really hurnting can be fun (usually later, over a beer).
Thanks a lot for all the advice everyone. I have a feeling that these laps will be quite short. The track will be a bit longer than last year’s 12hr track which took us about 16mins per lap on bikes. If it’s similar to the 12hr track, it’ll have some very steep ascents but some fun singletrack and some firetrails as well. There will be some good technical creek crossing too. They probably won’t have water in them but they’ve got rocks around them and so on. I’ve got a long way to go to being as fit as I’d like to be.
Joe,
I don’t know that I’ll be able to do as much training as you did because I’m pretty busy at the moment and I’m also not as motivated as you obviously are, but I’ll try. I might go on those longer muni rides on sunday though.
Franz,
Thanks for the links. I’ll get onto downloading those videos or whatever they are soon…what are they?
Nathan,
I’ll take your advice and take it easy at the start, and I’ll definately take heaps of photos and videos. I’ve always liked having photos and videos of fun events like this to remind me of what it’s like.
Tim,
Last year at the 12hr we had a massuse (I have no idea how to spell it) supplied by the bike shop. I didn’t have any massages then but I probably will if I’ve got the chance this year.
actually - I’d forget about the pain-killers.
It’s not good practice to take pain-killers during a race or ride - you can really injure yourself this way.
If the pain is that bad then you should stop, if it goes away then carry on - if it doesent - see a medic.
