+2 for Roger’s recommendation. I went out on the singletrack before I felt ready for it, and it helped push along my progress more quickly.
I’m confused now 
I thought singletrack roads were tarmac roads only wide enough for one car. Is it something else?
Edit.
Just gooogled it. There’s singletrack and single track.
Cheers,
Finally started free-mounting 
How is your progress? How high is your success-rate with free-mounts?
shufps, hey that’s looking pretty solid. I love your step forward onto the uni…I’ve seen MuniAddict doing the same with the 36er but I’ve not tried the technique. Free mounting the 20" uni feels pretty easy now although I may still only have an 80% success rate. My seat is loose and this has been a distraction/excuse for a bit 
Free mounting the 26" Muni is still a bit hit-and-miss although my initial issue with squishing my gentleman’s bits seems a little less problematic now. I’m throwing myself further over the uni before applying too much weight to the pedals and that is avoiding the nut crushing, however, I often UPD after just a couple of pedals so my technique still needs a little work.
Now exams and a few other distractions are out of the way I need to get back to my daily practice.
As rogeratunicycledotcom says, I just need to get out on the trails with it but I’d like to just firm up the free mounting before I do that otherwise I’m just going to get frustrated. I’m off to a grassy park tonight to work on free mounting the Muni and riding off tarmac. Expect a report later!
UL
…I loved the fact you UPDed as you went off the edge of the pavement…any little obstacle like this still throws me…lol.
Day 23 - Spent just 15 minutes riding the 26" Muni around the park (on grass) before I was totally buggered. Had plenty of free mounting practice with a roughly 25% success rate but unfortunately I’m only riding away from those 25% of the time. That doesn’t make good stats for success!
75% of my mounting attempts are resulting in me being perfectly balanced on top of the uni but with insufficient forward momentum to get going. This is often crown-jewel-crunching related. When I do get going I often UPD within two revolutions (or 4 half cranks using the, surely, international measure as seen in post by LargeEddie and myself!). This is sometimes simple distraction….foot not quite on a pedal or ‘groin pain’ but more often than not it’s simply not being used to riding on slow (grassy) or uneven surfaces. I’m getting there.
What I did discover today is just how incredibly tiring riding on grass is with a big fat tyre. I’m finding that I’m pressing so hard on the pedals I’m standing up so I’m pretty certain I’m not getting my weight in the seat! Like every other new unicycling experience I’ve no doubt this will come but I hope it gets easier.
Now I’m more confident free mounting I may head to Greenham Common (site of the American airstrip for bombers here in the UK until the 90’s I think) where they have reasonably hard tracks to try pedalling around. Fingers crossed
UL
That’s an interesting way of breaking it down statistically. I’ve been thinking along a somewhat similar line, that I’ll count any free mount I can ride away from as a success but that depends as much on being able to make the first big balance correction as it does on executing the actual mount well.
It seems as though in a lot of the video tutorials I’ve seen, the rider idles a couple of cycles or does a couple of hops to catch his or her balance before riding off from a static mount, and I don’t have either of those in my toolkit yet. So if anything the bar for success might be higher for us right now.
Nice to remembered for that, or heck, for anything. Lately I’ve been going far enough not to want to bother counting. But Google Maps tells me that it’s 269 feet from my house downhill to the near end of the street. I can ride all the way down there with a lot of back pressure but haven’t made it all the way back up yet.
Oh, I was hoping that a big tire would make it easier than when I tried it with my 20". Have you tried holding onto the saddle bumper or handle? I’ve started making a point of practicing that while just rolling along on the flats. I know on a bicycle I pull up on the handlebars a lot while climbing (and I like climbing) and I think I need to get used to doing something like that to get enough weight on the pedals on big uphills and high resistance surfaces, eg, grass.
This techique gives me forward momentum … I didn’t manage to mount my unicycle otherwise.
Day 24 - pretty much a repeat of my last session with the 26" Muni getting out there on grass and learning to free mount and cope with some undulating surfaces. Holy crud riding on grass with a fat tyre (well, OK, only 2.5") is hard work. 
I’m not sure if my lungs are giving out first or my legs…its a race to exhaustion by all my constituent parts. I managed 15 - 20 minutes before starting to hallucinate at which point I thought it would be wise to finish for the day.
On the learning side I am starting to get a free mounting technique that works on the 26" Muni but I’m still only getting a 20 - 25% success rate. This is predominantly down to not getting my weight forward enough during ‘launch’ to get the momentum going. On analysis this is pretty much entirely down to either rolling over my nuts or the fear that I’m going to roll over my nuts! I’m starting to find a stance for mounting that gets me better positoned on the seat and, with the back foot on tip toe, I’m more upright so less (nut crunching) rolling over the seat to mount is required. It’s just a matter of getting enough ‘spring’ to get the back foot onto the front pedal and I’m away.
Does any of that make sense?!!
Bottom line is mounting is getting better, but I need to build up my fitness levels for riding off road. Going to head to some hard packed tracks next to see how I fair on them.
UL
It does to me anyway. Jump mounts and such are impressive, but for your go-to, bread-and-butter, get-out-of-jail free mount, it makes sense to try to make it the smallest, least spectacular possible move. Less going on, less to go wrong.
I’ve started thinking along the lines of what you say about “better positioned on the seat and, with the back foot on tip toe.” That might be something that gets left out of tutorials for beginners, maybe because it’s too obvious to experienced riders. It seems like I do better if I make a conscious effort to weight the saddle as much as possible before starting the mount, to roll it up to vertical with as little drama as I can manage, and then to stand up and unweight it for better balance control once my back foot is on the pedal and I’m waiting to my momentum to tilt me forward, then pedal away.
Day 25 - Well, on rogeratunicycledotcom, Alucard & Lloyd Braun’s recommendation I got out onto some simple tracks on Greenham Common on what used to be the American airbase here in West Berkshire. My free mounting on the 26er is a bit hit and miss but with no mounting posts (and an inability to ride more than 50m without a UPD) I had a tonne (metric not imperial!) of practice today. Its very warm here today by English standards so I’ve perspired half my body weight in a 45 minute loop of the common. And when I say loop of the common I actually mean a loop of one small end of the common never really going out of sight of the car.
Here I am half way around. I think if you were to pan the camera to the right you’d see my prone and sweaty body gasping for air.
If I can just keep this up for a year I may be able to uni 100m and do it quicker than walking it.
UL
Day 26 - took the 26er to the park for some more work building up my stamina on grass. No mounting posts once out in the field so this was also intended as a push to work on the free mounting. The local Yoof were in force but, rather than jeering me when I UPD’ed they actually came over and asked if they could have a go. Three of them tried it out and discovered how blooming’ difficult it was but I confess one of them did really well copying my free mounting style and looked a bit of a natural. Bloody young people and their natural talent!
After my stint at the weekend free mounting is actually starting to get a bit more reliable…I’m maybe riding away from half of my attempts but, most importantly, I’m not suffering so much with the nut crushing for some reason.
I noticed some gentle sloping lumpy bits at one end of the park so finished up the session riding up and down more challenging inclines. Coming down was relatively straight forward but going up I found a real challenge. I think I may need to learn to hold onto the seat handle with one hand to give me some grunt but I’m not 100% sure.
After 20 mins on the grass/slopes I’m exhausted but very pleased with myself. I need to get back into riding every day again to keep the progress up. I’m planning on returning to the 20" trainer to work on idling next.
UL
Hey, Well Done Uni Lateral . You’re really going great guns. Took me months to be able to ride unassisted 
Nice to hear about friendly yoofs
Don’t laugh at me now, but do you know what helps me when I’m trying to keep on my uni as I go either uphill or down ?
I pretend that I’m ‘Unigeezer’ :). I hold my arm out above my head and I seem to balance better.
Kudos to you for having a go at idling. I can’t idle to save my life !
Maybe not but you look like you’re doing a sterling job on that 36er 
I laughed at your first attempts on video because I still ride like that when I first get on my 26er…leaning forward and then immediately pedalling the Uni underneath me and coming to a halt and having to lean forward again. It’s just about overcoming that fear I guess…
UL
Hello unilateral, similar to yourself I took to the hills ( err! slopes ) as soon as I could ride. What a great feeling it is as you pick up speed on one wheel. I didn’t cycle back up though until my legs were stronger. It helps when cycling up a hill to lean into the hill, just like when you’re walking up a hill.
Good to know that you’re still setting new challenges for yourself.
Happy cycling.
Yes leaning helps a lot when going up hills, found it easier on the legs.
Hey Uni Lateral
No kidding! 
You and Alucard are awesome! (46 sounds spritely to me!)
Isn’t she something!
Like you say: “sterling job!”
You’re doing great Uni Lateral !
Keep on keeping on!
As always, thanks for the feedback guys. My learning/improving depends on the help I receive here so it’s really appreciated.
Day 27 - man it’s hot here…still 24 Celsius or above when I go for my 30 minute evening uni session. Started off across the local sports field and, where I’d really struggle before I now find I can make reasonable progress bumping over the (I confess very small) irregularities on the ground. From here I headed along a rough bit of pavement (sidewalk for some of you) with lots of bends and obstacles in the form of telegraph poles and from there onto a bumps but hard packed mud trail. A few learns from this session:
- my mounting technique and success rate is getting better but has plenty of room to improve.
- I’m struggling to ride in a straight line…even when the terrain looks essentially flat. I seem to be constantly having to correct my direction and this is quite exhausting.
- even the most gentle incline affects my ability to make progress. I watch other people on YouTube hurtling along forrest trails but I seem to be constantly coming to a halt and having to consciously push forward. Not sure if this is poor technique or simply weakness in my legs. I’m back to trying to think about my weight in the seat.
I did manage a 150m stretch of trail without UPD’ing which is similar to what I can do on the flat/tarmac so I think my distance is probably more a function of my legs/lungs than my ability to balance.
UL
(Typing this the following morning I’m really feeling last nights efforts in my calves. I guess this is the constant free mounting)
Yes, putting your weight on the saddle allows your legs to spin much more freely. Standing on the pedals exerts downward pressure, greatly reducing forward momentum. Over time you will sit more and more into the seat until you are able to put all of your weight on to the seat. Then you can start to really spin those cranks. If you’re cycling on a flat trail, you might try tilting your saddle forwards slightly. This might help you to build up some speed.
On the bumpy trails you could try lowering your tyre pressure. This will help to stop your wheel from over reacting to every bump.
Hope this helps.
Yeah try to put the least amount weight possible on the pedals (~95% on the seat).
I tried to ride forward smoothly and my feet were so light, they’d occasionally come off a bit. After a while u find a happy medium where feet don’t come off and ur legs don’t get tired.
The one exception is going up/down hills. Your hillside pedal will have more pressure (nearly all if its steep enough).
Great progress! My Uni will be here on Wed. I bough a cheap 16" on Craig’s List last week and after 4 or 5 20 min sessions in one day the pedal started to break out of the crank 
Also found after reading a bit that a 16" is quite small for even a 5’ 8" man.
New crank on order and a 10 yr old and 7 year old who are excited to give it a go.
I bought a Torker CX 24. Not the best but should be serviceable while I try to learn to balance my 240lb but on one wheel. Cranks are cheap but hopefully I won’t have the same problem with a name brand Uni.
Keep up the good work and I will keep checking here for inspiration. 