I ride on some small trails with 114mm ISIS cranks on my Nimbus 20" freestyle. It works pretty well, considering these are very flat trails with a few big bumps from tree roots.
For a while I’d been going to a unicycle club, who had hired a school gym to ride around in. Then I’d take the freestyle unicycle. Those peeps wanted me to put the seat as high as possible that even if when stand there hardly is any space between the seat and ur crutch. When riding outside like that, it is way too high. I reckon for free-style tricks it needs to be all the way up.
In order to deal with bumps from tree roots I like to be able to stand up and have some flexibility to catch the bumps with my legs.
In Thailand I also bought a unicycle, but those peeps are very short and thus they only had short seatposts. My legs are near folded on it and it is not comfortable riding that way. Unfortunately the seatpost pipe has a diff diameter than the seat posts I have at home, so my current ones don’t fit on it.
I do prefer the seat to somewhat higher, which saves my knees.
I’m training to ride my 26 In Nimbus Mountain Unicycle up Mt. Washington New Hampshire. Thats 4700 Ft (1430 Meters) Elevation gain over 7.6 miles with an average grade of 12%. My weekly mileage has been around 35 miles with 3000-4000 Feet of elevation per week. Because I don’t live on a mountain ( I live in central md, more of a coastal plane), I do hill repeats on sections of hills with 12 % grade, usually 8-15 repeats. I’ve realized that I get knee pain after a week of heavy load. I think it’s from the down hills since I don’t have a break. It takes a lot of force to slow yourself down. Does anyone else who rides terrain not have brakes?
My first few muni rides with others were on my brakeless 24in Torker. No knee pain but definitely more fatigue at the end. It requires a lot more energy to ride at a safe controlable speed down steeper grades than you think. When I upgraded to unis with brakes I found myself riding much faster than I expected l, albeit in still a slow rider, and it was still comfortable. Brakeless is doable but definitely not as fun or easy as with a brake.
Edit: welcome to the forum.
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I’ve hiked Mt Washington before and didn’t remember it being so much elevation! Sounds really fun with the uni and I would love to join but I’m in Europe now.
Other than the brakeless part, that sounds similar to how I train. I live in Munich so it’s about an hour to the mountains so I often train short 10-15% grade uphills of 30-50m and do multiple repeats. If you don’t have mountains that’s a good compromise. But basically you need to be training muscle strength and cardio endurance. I think the steep uphill repeats train the strength pretty well and felt they really helped me. Combine that with cardio training (either running, biking or longer uni rides) and should be good.
It’s been a long time since I rode downhill without a brake but I think the worst for your knees is if the seat is too low. Think about adding a brake as it would also allow you to go with shorter cranks (if you are strong enough to push them uphill).
I have a similar pass climb in Italy at the Mendelpass that I love and will be doing it again in June (the pass part is just over 1000m but can be combined for about 1300m of pure uphill). I don’t do it as a race, but usually the 1000m in about 1.5 hours.
I’ve been doing lots of freestyle (and weight training) but need to start training muni uphill: June 1st is the uphill race in Villanders Italy that is relatively short but very steep and challenging. I would like to beat my time from last year (when I was pretty fit training for Unicon, so not an easy goal).
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I think it’s a matter of long-term training, especially for the tendons and ligaments. I’ve been doing lots of uphill for about 10 years and also trying shorter cranks on the 29" where the forces are very high. I haven’t had any knee problems from uphill uni (although I did have knee problems years before from uphill biking but I think from overtraining without buildup). After 3 ACL surguries (skiing and mountainbiking, now both knees) I had to build up my ligaments and tendons each time and deal with swelling during my rehab (about 18 months total, but of course never as good as before). Just “listen” to your knees/body and if it’s swollen the next day, then rest and do a little less the next time. But being strong helps almost everything and regular training is key.
Downhill with a low seat is not good for the knees. When I started muni I would put the seat really low for downhill as it felt safer. As I improved in skill I raised the seat progressively and now only lower the seat a few centimeters if I expect to be dismounting frequently in trial-like terrain (but rocks and drops). So for your knees, keep the seat as high as you can while still not feeling unsafe for unexpected dismounting.
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