Nice one Chuck! That sounds fantastic. I have been loving the 36er GUNI getting better at shifting etc. Beat my old WR going to work last week - what’s more was not destroyed at all. I have to agree with you, Florian is a genius. See you in a couple of days!
—Nathan
PS YES you guys move to Norcal - so many opportunities to ride here…
Did you wear knee pads on your century, Chuck? If so did they rub or chafe at all? If they are gonna chafe a century’s when you’ll feel the effects! I just went on a Schlumpf 36" ride without knee protection, perhaps a little foolishly. Only a couple of low speed UPDs landed on my feet when climbing (too) slowly in high gear.
Sweet Nathan!! Getting into the gear is soooo fun! 
And @Tony, I wore Ken’s little blue knee slip things. Are they knee warmers? Whatever they are, they didn’t have any padding in them, but were decently thick. Ken obviously knows what they are. 
They didn’t chafe me at all, though at times they were annoying because they bunched up behind my knees. I think I’m going to wear just Ken’s knee thingajiggers from now on (instead of actual bona fide knee pads), because I haven’t had a run-off-the-front-and-die episode since that one before RTL and I’ve ridden quite a lot since then all over the place in high gear without kneepads. I know, I know, dumb. but real hard kneepads are so annoying! (at least I think they are…) As fatigued as I got Sunday, my only UPD was right at the end when the bearings in my left pedal seized. I was in first gear doing about 6 mph, and it was humiliating
Yeah, I get unstable sometimes when climbing in high gear, too. It’s kind of a pain how hard it is to push the high gear up a hill when you don’t have much initial speed to work with. Nowadays, pretty much, I always make sure to let myself shift down instead of trying to muscle it out at ~11-12 miles an hour in high. It may be slower to shift down and spin up at 9-10 mph, but when you get to the top, you’ll be able to kick it right back into high gear and pour in the juice to get right back to cruising speed with no holy-crap-i’m-really-tired penalty :). When I try to muscle up hills in high gear at a sustained 11 or 12 mph, my legs are fried by the top, and I spend a long time resting at 13-15mph after the top before my strength comes back. The slowest I ever let myself go in high gear before I shift is maybe 14mph, and I start getting iffy at 13… if I can push it really hard and keep the high gear above 15 or 16mph and just sprint up a short climb, I do, but if the hill is longer I’ll usually just put in some decent power and watch my speed go down to 13, and then just shift and spin up at 9-11 mph till the top of whatever it is. That way my legs never really get fried from climbs, and I don’t usually fall from hitting a bump too slowly in high gear on a climb and failing to accelerate back out of it from tired, used up legs. (But the shorter ones deserve to be sprinted like heck :))
And @John, yeah, salt tablets are a superly good idea! (I’ve never taken them before… but methinks they make sense now that you mention it.) I think I push a bit harder for the same speed on my unicycle as I would on my bike for an “equally acceptable/satisfying pace” (23mph on my bike is about as satisfying as 18.5mph on my unicycle for cruising, but I don’t work as hard doing 23 on my bike as I do to hold down 18.5 on my uni.) So… I think that the extra power might mean that we run out of sugar and salt faster holding down a comparable pace on a unicycle.
I do notice that on my uni, I run out of leg energy and start to feel weak much more quickly than on my bike if I don’t stay GU’d up and keep food and water in me regularly, whereas, when I’m on my bike, I can pretty much just eat a Clif bar and go ride hard for 50 miles without running out of gas or getting that “weak” feeling where your brain says “go” and your legs go as hard as if your brain had only said a quarter of a “go.”
I actually have no idea. They were purchased on a whim at the $2 shop. I think I had intended them to be lightweight racing kneepads compared to my OTT beefy 661’s. But then realised they probably weren’t race legal (no padding), or match the Team NZUNI strip.
I didn’t think to stuff socks and underwear into them though 
I forgot to mention that they cost $5 at the $2 shop 
Great job, Chuck, and a fun write-up. Now we wait for someone to ride a C in under 6 hours.
My money is on Chuck.
Hey Chuck, good work. I made the same mistake in my NYC century last month of not eating enough in the first 1/2, and likewise suffered exhaustion delirium after the finish. However, the pain is fading, I’ll probably try it again some day.
Ro
All my UPDs on the GUNI seem to be trying to muscle up hill. I also have the problem that if I don’t commit to downshifting at the bottom of the hill I can’t seem to relieve the torque pressure enough to get the hub to downshift mid-hill.
Hey, the osmundo, when you’re shifting, try kicking the wheel forward a bit (assuming you’re accelerating - on the forward end of the slop)… You know how you can push the wheel forward or backward under you by straightening or bending your back? Whenever I shift, I usually accompany it with a little bit of a pelvic thrust because it jolts the wheel out of whichever position of torque it’s in. This always works for me, and shifting out of a muscle-up-a-hill scenario hasn’t been a problem for me for quite some time now.
Oh, and Ken, thanks for those pads (I actually quite like them! They do give me a little piece of mind; for the smaller falls, I think they’d help a bit for that initial impact scrapage… and they don’t bunch up too much behind my knees while pedaling… which is a complaint I have with pretty much all the other pads I’ve tried)
With flat ground and smooth road, I don’t see why 6 hours would be too difficult. I’m sure that plenty of us could do it, actually. It’s only about 16 and 2/3 mph, and it’s not difficult to cruise over 17.5 or 18 for long periods of time. Jan and Arne and Ken could do it without any kind of problem, I’m sure. I bet Corbin could do it, too, once he gets his geared KH 36 going. And Dan Hansen, from Surly Speed Goats. (He’s a monster on his geared 36! He just doesn’t hang around the forums much, as far as I can tell.) Put Sam or Dustin on a geared up 36, and it’d be no sweat for either of them, too, methinks.
I want to go out and try to go fast at night with a bright light, so there’s no wind. I have this 3-mile loop in mind that’s all right turns at stop lights, and it’s flattish… I donno… need a light first!
Night riding is so much fun! During our 24hr rides, it’s probably the most interesting part of the challenge.
I just got a 36" Schlumpf today (thanks UDC NZ), after about 3months worth of bad luck, including a brand new and completely unusable KH36" frame. I’ll post a writeup and review once I have tested it out a bit, but I did a quick spin around a track and it was on avg about 7 secs faster per km than the Schlumpf 29"
I found the shifting much easier than the 29" Schlumpf, and but it did take alot more power to wind it up. That thing weighs a ton.
Wooooohoo Ken, got your geared 36! AWESOME!
Yeah, night riding is great. It’s also kind of nerve-wracking I did a 45 mile loop at night through a dark unlit canyon a week or so ago, and only 1/4 of the visible half of the moon was lit. Doing any kind of decent speed in the dark is pretty scary, and only really possible if you ride the route so much during the day that you’ve memorized where the few bumps are. But you can’t beat moonlight for beauty and trippiness, however little of it there is!
Also… I had something really interesting happen to me… my left pedal bearings finally seized up, which caused a couple of “wait, what the heck??” UPDs before I finally figured out that my pedal was locking intermittently… anyway, I replaced the pedal with one from my mountain unicycle, and found that because it wasn’t a WellGo MG-1, I COULDN’T RIDE! Well, I could ride, but the fastest I could ever comfortably go was maybe 15mph, because my foot was slipping everywhere. I neeeeeeeed to get another set of MG-1s, or somehow replace the bearing… I didn’t know how much I depended on the grippiness of that pedal!
Oh man, I’m totally jealous! I’ve been without a 36’er since RTL. I mailed my hub back to Florian right after RTL to get the bearings replaced, and I haven’t gotten it back 
I also don’t have a KH36; I’m still waiting for one to come into UDC USA.
I did borrow Grace (Nathan’s wife)'s 36’er for the San Francisco uni tour; it was the only time I have been on something larger than a 24" since RTL. Boy…I was slow, and tired at the end of the 39 mile ride!
corbin
I have actually been biking more lately. It is easier on my knees and I have been taking it easy since RTL to try and help my knee recover. Getting back on the ungeared 36 just doesn’t feel right after riding a guni and bicycling.
Yeah, moving out to the bay area in norcal has been in the back of my mind for about 2 years now, so there is definitely a chance that I will be out there sometime in the near future. The main things keeping me in Virginia/DC right now are the great fall weather, my friends, and…waiting on my hub to get sent to my house.
As far as your need for a light. I have the Cygolite Dualcross that I mount to my helmet, and it works great. John Childs also has the same light…but the later version (longer batter life and brighter), check it out here: http://cygolite.com/products/new/DualCrossPro/DualCrossPro_Lion.html
The NiMH version(which I have) is a little bit cheaper, but the battery is heavier and bigger than the Li Ion version.
I believe once I get my hub back, I will be the only person on the east coast with a KH/Schlumpf 36. Is anyone else here going to be building one?
I was able to do my second 100 mile ride here in Norway before it now is getting to cold. Starting out at 8:00 in the morning in 2 degrees.
Managed to get the time 7:46:00. So you beat me with 3 minutes, Ken! 
I was riding a fixed 36" with 110mm Cranks.
Here in Northern California we have great spring, summer and fall weather. 72 degrees in Berkeley today!
Nice riding Kjetil.
Yep, I was also using 36"/110mm cranks. It was quite a hilly course though, but I love the 110’s.
MG-1s scare me for that very reason. They feel very fragile to me.
And way too grippy. I can’t reposition my feet at high revs. I much prefer the heavier Snafus, or better still…Gusset Slim Jims. They’re awesome.
Whatever pedals you are used to are probably the best. My personal favorite is the Azonic A-Frame Lite. But I also really like the MG-1s - they are light and sticky but we don’t find them fragile. They are quite cheap for their quality.
—Nathan
Yep, I hear you on this! I rode Ken’s Schlumpf 29er in RTL with MG-1s and never had a problem with lack of grip. Then back in Kiwiland I rode my own Schlumpf 29er with Odyssey Twisted plastic pedals and found that they weren’t grippy enough to feel confident at maximum speed. Changing to MG-1s fixed the problem straight away! My MG-1s are now on my Schlumpf 36 (whereas Odyssey Twisted plastics I find perfectly adequate on an ungeared 36"). Grippy pedals seem to help on Schlumpfs.
Good bike shops should be able to service your pedals, Chuck. Or you can even do it yourself.