Thanks Andy and Nathan for posting information about RTL (Ride the Lobster).
I’m in! I think we could get a few teams from MN to show up too.
–Irene
Wow, this looks fantastic - that’s my 2008 holiday sorted 
Chris
Since these are unlimited races, people used quite varying cycles. I used 110mm cranks for the 10km and 125mm cranks for the 43km races on my non-geared 36" cycle. On the 43km the hills were steep enough for me that 125mm was the right choice, but stronger riders were able to make them on shorter.
The balance envelope gets small when you have a large effective wheel size (geared 36 -> 54") or very short cranks. There were many crashes and some people had trouble with the multiple sections on dirt. When contemplating racing your share of 800km, you need to consider how much even one crash hurts your performance. You don’t want to crap out on day 1 due to injuries as that would leave your team at a serious disadvantage.
–Nathan
Yes Sam… note what Nathan says. No crashes, especially if we are in the same team. :-p
Roger
Great! I’ve been waiting for this since the meeting at Unicon. Thanks guys, count me in.
Paul
Wow, this sounds awesome. I’m excited already. Sounds like I’ll be there, if all goes well. I’ll be on Team Uni BC, I hope. Awesome, see you all there!
Team NY?
I’d love to organize a team. That means adding one or two riders (to me). I think my bro is available, tho that’s no longer a given due to his work these days. So I’m interested to see what other riders are available and want to do it.
Steve, I saw your earlier posts, so I’m guessing you’re planning to go. We may have more than one team.
Andy, Ken, Nathan, etc: Ostensibly, it’s a fun ride that has a winner. Realistically it’s sounding a lot like a (mostly) serious race. I’m nervous about getting away from the mission (which seems more like a fun ride than a race).
If we veer more towards ‘race,’ then perhaps we should aim for regional team-making, as seems to be happening.
My wife and I were there in the early 90s and would love to go back with the kids, so we’ve got a good chance of going.
I’ll try to keep a list of the NJ/NY crowd. Haven’t heard yet from PA, but there are some strong big wheelers out there, and they’re still regional, arguably. (Podzol - you gotta do this!)
So far I have two other regional riders interested: Gregg from NJ (Unipsycler) and Adam Cohen from LI,NY (JustOneWheel). Add the Stone brothers and myself and my local (Albany,NY) pal Roland my be interested, too, and we’ve got 6 riders right there.
Of course, as the reality draws nearer, people will drop out for various reasons, but I’d still say our “region” could field a couple dark horse teams.
Oh, it’s a race alright. As Roland has said (of charity rides, no less) “How is it NOT a race?!”
So what happens if there are more than 20 teams (60 people) that want to do it?
I had better start training and continue working on a better saddle. I think I will need it! And book the time off work. So far my longest rides have been 20kms on the road and about 25kms off-road on my KH29XC. I guess that is the warm up for this event!
You did not say “few other teams from MN”!
Does it mean you’re planning to ride in a French Team ??
Well I’d guess that’s a problem for Andy and Nathan to figure out, but my vote would be that us “posties” get priority, followed by those that have taken the time to sign up for the updates at that weblink provided. From there, if still too many, maybe a “timed” qualifying ride, with some sort of proof of speed required. That’ll filter out all us dorks that just want to have some fun with this event, and we can go organize and pay for our own ride somewhere else.
If that’s not agreeable, then I think we just queue up by latitude, and go West to East. BC, Seattle, and California riders in first, then Idaho, Minnesota, etc. working east, then hop across the pond and keep going. 
Why limit the race to only 20 teams?
I reckon when it comes down to it, whilst it’s easy to be super keen right now, the number of people with cokers who can seriously have a chance at racing 800km, plus the time to take off, will mean that the number serious teams will be limited. The unitours, whilst not super-expensive, don’t get this kind of numbers.
I’m kind of totally up for this, but it’s bang in the middle of my PhD writing up period. hmmm. Maybe I could take a laptop.
Joe
I’m certainly interested.
Looking at the dates, this race finishes the day before the biggest 24 hour mountain bike race (Mountain Mayhem) in Europe. Reading this thread, it sounds as though there may be a drop in the number of unicyclists entering in mountain mayhem in 2008. With the time difference between the Canada and the UK, I may struggle to make it to 'Mountain Mayhem in time…
… Damn!
Hmmm…???
Steve
Entering a 24hr race a few hours after this event? 
That does not sound like fun, even without a transatlantic flight.
Keith
Yes I had realised this as well. If can not get back in time it will the second year in a row I will miss. -(
I can not make this years either because I am on the MUT ride.
We have loads of time to recover… well, maybe not, but who cares!
Roger
I was vaguely hoping that it was a week between the end of this race and Mountain Mayhem, but looking again, the dates imply it won’t be.
A five day super-marathon race finishing Friday night, an overnight East-bound transatlantic flight and arriving just in time to swap cranks and start a 24hr off-road race on Saturday… I think we’d need sadistic torture professionals to come up with something more exhausting! 
Oh well - if it’s possible it may be fun/interesting to try to get to both, but the ‘Lobster’ has more going for it in my mind.
Anyone know what the ‘Ride the Lobster’ means?
Sam
We have not decided yet what will happen if more than 20 teams want to race. It is too early to tell. Don’t worry though, this will be addressed in a fair way.
Each team requires a support vehicle - the plan is to provide this free of cost. In addition, each team will require 4 days worth of lodging and food - that’s 20 person days per team. You can see how the incremental cost of each team requires quite a bit of extra sponsorship money.
Frankly, we picked 20 out of the blue. I think it’s a reasonable number and would make a great race. More on this later.
One other thing I’d like to mention. Very soon after we started working on this, a paragliding friend of mine showed me an awesome DVD that I instantly ordered and have watched several times (including at Calif Muni Weekend). It shows a race that is in many ways similar to Ride the Lobster. Each team had a support person driving, and one person racing. It was 800km across the Alps. You had to fly or walk the whole way. Interestingly they flew over a couple of the passes we did on the Alps Uni Tour only days away from us. They had real-time online GPS tracking. Each team was issued a camcorder and was required to make diary entries. I don’t think we’ll do the camcorder thing but there will be requirements to do interviews and some type of logging or blogging during the race. If your support person is up for the extra work, each team could probably make an awesome video about their experience.
The biggest difference in the races is that Ride the Lobster is a stage race like Tour de France whereas X-Alps is a go-for-broke 24 hour suffer-athon lasting about 2 weeks. They had 14 competitors of which only 4 completed the course in time (race ends 48 hours after the winner lands).
While X-Alps is many times harder than Ride The Lobster, we have taken some ideas from them for our race. I recommend buying the disc even though it is not cheap especially if you are paying with our newly shrunken US$. Here is the link. They do this race every 2 years - they are gearing up now for the 3rd installment, summer 2007. Unfortunately they seem to have taken down the extensive website they had up until a couple of months ago. Oh well, buy the DVD.
—Nathan
How fast can you go?
I was doing some calculating on how fast you can go on different uni’s. 29er, Coker, and geared 29er (44incher) or Coker (54incher). See attachment for graph. I don’t know about trying to spin small cranks (110 etc) for 3+ hours per day. My only experience is on my 29er with 110 and 150 cranks. I like the 150 cranks better on 15-25km rides but I do hit some gravel trails and hills too.
You can clearly see that to go over 20kph you need a coker spinning 110 rpm and to hit 30 kph you will be spinning over 170.
How fast can someone go for an hour or more? There is an hour record isn’t there? Who and how fast?
29erSpeed.pdf (18.7 KB)