Future of Unicycle Road Racing (here's what I think; what do you think?)

General
21

Hey, the redlinewaterboy, methinks that’s quite a perfect comparison you have there with the trials rider on clipless pedals! I think that should just inspire others to further improve beyond what the original clipless rider could accomplish with his gear.

Also, @Ken, I totally agree with you on the relativity of silliness (I love that word, btw… relativity :)) That’s justification for what I wan’t to think but couldn’t figure out why. If unicycling is silly, why even a bicycle?

Also, yeah, @Klaas Bil, I think… you’re pretty much on the dot; my maximum hour distance might be 31 or 32 at the tops right now, and the highest I could see myself as a rider realistically getting would maybe be 36 or so, but only with a higher gear ratio than 1.5 and ONLY with a ton of training. (I doubt I could get that fast in only a year or two.) I bet a really accomplished cyclist on an appropriate rig could get over 42km, though. I say your prediction of a 40km hour record by 2018 is a good one.

22

Wery interesting post.

Remember that the road and track bicycles is not fastest buildt. The bicycles must have sitting positions inside regulations. We Unicyclist is sitting over the crank and have better sitting position to go fast with more power.

23

I’d be surprised if we could get more power to go into our unicycles than riders of upright bikes, but then again, IMO, it’s really worth no more than a chuckle or two to compare, I think. Mesay get as close as you can, enjoy, and kick some butt in the process if you feel like it :slight_smile:

24

Can’t wait till a somewhat serious cyclist tries unicycling. Somebody who can spin and can put power into their stroke. Somebody should send Lance a unicycle. Since he’s retired he should have some time to learn to ride.

25

great post

I want to applaud Chuck for being humble and saying it like it is. He isn’t that great, and a pro biker would destroy our times if he trained on a guni for a few years. It is nice to see you were not blinded by your 15 minutes.:slight_smile:

As a spectator (steady but slow 36 er ), I would like to ask for simplicity. I have been following motorcycle racing for years. They have way to many classes ! I have no idea if the guy who is formula extreme champ is faster then world superbike, or even what the difference between the bikes is. It is crazy boring for the spectators.

Because it is such a fringe sport, our only hope of grabbing viewer attention is to give them what they want, and not design the rule book to assuage the ego’s of the riders. I can tell you what the viewers want. They want to see a 5 minute highlight tape that ends in crowning the undisputed uni racing champ of the world. They will watch that. Make it more complex then that, and they will not understand what they are watching, and thus will not care !

26

I disagree…for the moment anyway.

Unicycling has been traditionally undergeared compared with bikes. You are pedalling very fast at very low resistance. Going fast has been about how fast you can pedal without falling off. We are still a way off getting an equivalent gear to many bikes. As Chuck mentioned, probably a 1:2 or even 1:2.5 gear might be closer. He would still go faster than many Tour de France level riders if you put them on unicycles.

Fit bikers do not necessarily make for very fast unicyclists at all, at least not with the current gearing. I’ve seen 9yr old kids cruise at 23km/hr on a 24" limited unicycle, and conversely, some very fit adults who would not be able to get anywhere near that speed on a Coker. That will probably change as gear ratios become bigger.

With regards to the debate about geared and ungeared…one of the reasons I took up unicycling is for it’s simplicity. A wheel and cranks directly connected to the axle. It is still my favourite unicycle…I do not ride geared except for racing. I do all my unitouring on an Unguni. I like it for the same reasons that many mountainbikers have ditched their multiple gears and gone singlespeed.

I think it’s a fundamental change in unicycling…much more so than say going from an Eddy Merkx style traditional bike to an Obree style bike in bicycling hour records…that has more to do with a change in body position, not how the wheel is actually driven.

You could argue that someone could make a 46" Unicycle that only tall people could ride. Should we have a disctinction between multiple wheel sizes? How do you compare a 36" with a 46"? Well, the simplicity test is still whether or not it is driven by gears or by a direct drive. So no, I don’t think different wheel sizes should matter within Unlimited, Unguni racing.

In my opinion, I think it is best to classify records as limited (24"/125mm), then Unguni (of any wheel size/crank lengh) and Guni (of any gear size and wheel size/crank lenght).

Are there too many classes and will it confuse people? Possibly, but we have many more age group categories than three! It would probably still mean that GUnis are racing against Ungunis. But at least there is an option for people to compete within their own subclass in a race. And that their results should count for something more than overall placing.

For instance…if you came 7th overall in a unicycle race, but was first female. It might have been more fun to place 1/2/3rd, but you’re still recognised as first overall in your category.

27

Chuck- very well said. Every sport has some kind of growing pains when new technology makes it easier to perform at a higher level. For example both crampons and camming devices were hotly contested as “cheating” in climbing in the early 1900’s and 1970’s, and look at mixed/ice climbing and hard trad climbing today, where these debates still go on (like criticizers of heel spurs on crampons).

It is very important to note that we are having this discussion at the same time as we can hardly imagine what other kinds of improvements may be made to our equipment in the next few years. This is only the start.

At the same time, Ken has a good point. A lot of us, myself included, got into this sport due to its simplicity. Luckily, we do this for fun, even serious racing, and thus we get to make the rules as to how to define our own fun in terms of the equipment we personally ride. It does make sense to level the playing field in terms of competition and having a singlespeed class now seems necessary. I think that will most likely be on the table at the next IUF rulebook committee meetings.

In terms of silliness, every sport done for the sake of it is “silly”. There is no sport where you can create a rational argument as to its inherent usefulness, beyond secondary effects - e.g. fitness, personal self-worth, income if you work at it, etc. What makes a sport “serious” in a popular sense is societal acceptance- how well it has been normalized in the eyes of the public.

If we care about societal acceptance, we also need to put unicycling in the correct context. For example, the difference in “fringe-ness” between unicycling and freeride mountain biking is much less than, say freeride mountain biking and soccer. Yet freeride mountain bikers can take themselves pretty seriously sometimes, as in any sport where athletes live in a bubble surrounded by like-minded people.

So- I think this debate is really healthy because we are all currently shaping the culture of our sport in ways that will have huge effects in the years to come. Thanks Chuck!

Kris

28

I agree with most of the statements being made here. Chuck is quite modest for all of his achievements in the past few months.

Geared unicycles, for those that have tried them, have really changed the way that we think about riding. I am not a fan of spinning ridiculously fast, and however fun I found riding a 36er ungeared, I have a lot more fun on a geared set up with a slower cadence. I think that geared hubs will make a lot more people get interested in pushing road unicycling to the extreme. Already there has been talk of racing across America and other extreme endurance events that are now somewhat within sight now that we have seen what geared 29s and geared 36s can do.

We have been talking about all of the advances in the sport, and how at this rate, we will have even more upgrades to our equipment. Maybe we should discuss what will allow us to push the sport/speed even more. Now that Kris has jumped aboard and released a KH36, and worked with Florian on a geared hub, hopefully more quality distance equipment will be in the works.

Right now it seems that the most important equipment upgrades we could use are lighter 36er wheelsets. Lighter rims, lighter tubes, and lighter tires.

29

I think this is the wrong approach; what we should be concerned with is getting practical systems with higher gear ratios. Then we can use commodity parts (700c) for the rest of the unicycle, and choose from hundreds of available lightweight bike parts. The only reason geared 36ers are faster than geared 29ers is the higher gear ratio; if you could choose any gear ratio, there’d be no reason to cart around the extra weight and size of a 36" wheel.

30

I agree that existing high-end bicycle parts have tremendous appeal but I think that the massive 36" wheel adds stability to a geared unicycle. Smaller, lighter wheels mean a twitchy ride. Again, this could be a rider specific phenomenon. Each rider must find the optimum trade off between putting energy into moving a heavy wheel or putting energy into maintaining balance in an unstable system with a fast response.

31

I like Ken’s idea of three categories: limited, unguni, and guni. That keeps it simple and doesn’t really break any patterns we’ve already set. It preserves the feat of spinning an ungeared unicycle ever faster, and, as per feel-the-light’s request for simplicity, establishes that the fastest in the guni category would be the “undisputed unicycle champion of the world” for the masses. I do think that unguni records should apply to the guni category as well, though. If someone beats a geared record without gears (which I could see happening), the time/distance should go down as the record in both categories.

Also, to Ken and Kris, I think I differ from you guys in that, after the challenge of riding a unicycle wore off, the reason I’ve continued to enjoy unicycling has not been the simplicity of direct-drive, but rather the challenge of doing “it” (whatever “it” is) on one wheel. So, when this kind of stuff happens, I think to myself, “wow, this is possible on one wheel!” while you and those sharing your mindsets may think “the simplicity of the cycle is being violated!” My view is this: as long as it’s on one human-powered wheel, I don’t care how the drivetrain works, and faster is better. One view isn’t necessarily better or worse than the other, but maybe that’s why I have fewer reservations about the use of gears. Just some food for thought.

32

A 29er isn’t unstable, it’s responsive. A racing bicycle is also skittish to someone who’s used to riding a commuter, but no one at the top end of bike racing would consider riding a commuter bike for its stability. The fast 29er riders at RTL didn’t look unstable at all; at the high end of the sport, the riders are skilled enough that stability is no longer a benefit; weight and responsiveness are more important.

33

Wow, there were a few responses in the time after I last refreshed this thread!

+1 to James and Greg on the 36" wheel. I can’t imagine riding anything other than a 36, and the reason is the ability to roll over bumps in the road without instant death.

34

limited and unlimited

Second on separating into “limited” and “unlimited” classes.

At NAUCC in Michigan in 2007, I entered the 10K in the “limited” category because I knew I didn’t stand a chance against geared/ungeared 36ers in the “unlimited” category. Turns out I did surprisingly well, and on my $100 Torker LX 24. So I did not have a expensive equipment hurdle. All I had to do was buy some 125mm cranks.

I believe that there is a lot to be said for having these competitions be accessable as many riders as possible.

–tom

35

I had zero dismounts on pavement in RTL (except for shifting). Bumps in the road are not a problem on a 29er.

36

Whoa there, didn’t mean to knock your ride. Sorry about that Tom :slight_smile: I must acknowledge that I have zero experience riding a geared 29, and have no problem maneuvering my 36. Hopefully that puts my remark in context. I’m sure a geared 29 is perfectly ridable over all sorts of junk in the roads, but there is something to be said for the relative invincibility I feel on my 36er’s wheel. That said, let’s not turn this into another 29 vs. 36 thread juuust yet… even though it’s headed there :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

37

Well, the thread is on the future of racing unicycling, and the equipment is a big part of that. My hypothesis is that, if you control for cyclist strength, given a particular effective gear ratio, the faster riders will be the ones on lighter-weight, more responsive cycles, if all else is equal. Certainly this is true for bicycling. As long as our gearing choices are limited and relatively low, 36ers will be faster than 29ers on typical terrain because of the higher effective gear. But if the equipment progresses to the point where we can choose to run a 90" gear on a 29er, the lighter weight and greater responsiveness will make the 29er faster on the roads. 29ers are already faster on hills that suit their gear ratio.

38

I also had no falls or dismounts (other than running up a hill or two) at RTL. A geared 29er is quite stable, but even with my limited experience on Chuck’s ride, I know that the geared 36 feels smoother.

I originally thought the geared 29 was quite squirrely, but after putting my proper seat with GB4s on it and getting about 100 miles on it, I became one with it and it didn’t feel squirrely at all.

39

You definitely have a good point there. I suppose we’ll have to see. I can’t wait until we have a 10-speed unicycle shiftable from .8 or so all the way to 3.5 or 4 to 1. I’ve been thinking about it a bit lately, and I don’t think it’s out of the question. I’d sure love to find out the optimum wheel size that way.

The responsiveness of the 29 aside, there’s something to be said for why the majority of bike racers run 700c wheels instead of 650c wheels, which are stiffer and lighter. There is some best size; we just don’t know what it is yet. For now (and without having ridden a 29, which makes me somewhat of a 36er fanboy), I’m sold on 36 inches.

40

Yes, these high-end lightweight vehicles are indeed responsive. No unicycle or bicycle is stable. There is a certain amount of energy required from the rider to maintain stability in a feedback control system. Some control systems (riders) are better at handling high inertia loads. Some control systems are better at handling low inertia loads. This is just the rider specific part. What I said was “…I think that the massive 36” wheel adds stability to a geared unicycle. Smaller, lighter wheels mean a twitchy ride. Again, this could be a rider specific phenomenon." Just because I think that massive wheels make stable rides and less energy hungry systems does not make it so for others.

I just wanted to point out that for some riders the heavy wheel is a benefit in terms of required energy production for high speed riding. The reason I believe that this is so for some riders is that for these riders less energy is expended in maintaining stability. In the energy budget of some riders that could outweigh having lightweight equipment.