Great Practice Block

General
1

I live on a great block for building up my distance riding!

One side of the block is the sidewalk running the length of my building. It is a new sidewalk and is perfectly flat and level (although it is only about 3 feet wide and has hedges encroaching - good for practicing straight rides, obstical avoidance, and mounting on a narrow path :slight_smile: ).

I then ride down a long wide sidewalk along a busy street. This sidewalk is not in great repair, but it only has one driveway (dip down and up). This is the most public part of the ride and it helps me get over my self-conciousness about riding in public. Also, the cracks and bumps are good practice (or at least they were a couple of months ago - I’m getting better).

Next comes a long gradual downhill leg with a few driveways. This leg of the trip really works out my upper thighs as I stay in control to the bottom. It also has a couple of low hanging trees to duck under or to let brush against my helmet.

The final leg of the trip starts out flat and then goes into a fairly steep climb back to where I started. The climb feels great to finish clean! This is especially true since half way up the hill there is a driveway where the dip is more like flat, hill, really-steep rather than down, flat, up. The “really steep” bit gets me about half the time.

The total round trip is about 600 meters or so.

Tonight’s practice consisted of a warm-up, a trip around the block, followed by two trips up and down the narrow, flat, smooth sidewalk that is the first leg of the round trip. I find that the easy riding makes for a great cool-down after the hill climb.

This may sound like an extremely short, easy trip for you who are into MUni, but I just started riding 3 months ago and it is helping me build my endurance.

(Maybe next year I’ll be ready for the 2004 VI Muni Weekend.:smiley: )

2

That’s one of the nice things about unicycling. It doesn’t take anything complicated to be fun. It sounds like you’ve got yourself a nice little course. Keep training, and maybe you can make it to the Moab MUniFest as well. :smiley:

3

Sounds like a good varied circuit.

One definition of MUni is ‘unicycling on terrain which is chosen by the rider because of the challenges it presents’. Your ride falls within this definition.

In 6 months’ time, this same ride will not be MUNi for you, but it still would for another keen beginner.

I bought my first purpose-made MUni about 15 months ago, and was amazed by what I could achieve on it. I rode up and over stuff I would have thought was impossible on one wheel. A few weeks ago, I was out on my 20 with short cranks, and took a short cut back to the car across a section which I used to regard as the pinacle of my MUni career! And it’s just as much fun now as it was then.

Keep riding at somewhere just short of your maximum ability, occasionally pushing it a bit harder, and your maximum will improve steadily and enjoyably. Have fun.