Unicycles are less stable than bicycles, obviously, but bicycles are also inherently unstable, and larger wheels have the same stabilizing effect on bikes as they do on unicycles. Stability is often cited by 29er enthusiasts as the reason they prefer 29ers over 26" mountain bikes. I’m sure that 36" bikes feel incredibly stable.
The extraordinary claim put forth by some in this thread is that the wheel sizes in use on the vast majority of bicycles, today, may not be the best wheel size for the vast majority of bicycles, today. I’ve not seen any evidence put forth for that position, so absent that evidence, I’m going to go with the assumption that today’s bicycle riders are not idiots choosing sub-optimal equipment.
I think it’s safe to say that you would not have been slower in New Zealand if you had a Schlumpf instead of an ungeared uni. It so happens that you’re an incredibly fast rider on an ungeared uni and so were able to beat two very fast geared riders; but you would have been faster still with gearing.
This is something that I’ve thought about plenty of times. And I don’t know about that. Geared and ungeared riding are two entirely different styles of riding. For that course, with all of it’s tight corners and windy situations I think ungeared was the way to go. (One specific stretch in mind is where it was too windy to push high gear, but low gear (with 150s) was of course slower than me on my 114s.) I still think that there are specific courses where ungeared is faster. However, with better gearing systems, I think that will no longer be the case.
A geared unicycle ridden well will probably be faster than an ungeared unicycle ridden equally well. It may be easier to cruise fast for long distance with gears.
However, many people prefer not to use gears.
There are practical advantages and disadvantages to each wheel size, and personal preference is possibly the biggest factor in choosing - at least if the rider is proficient enough to ride each size.
We all do it for fun, and we have different ideas about which aspects of our sport are fun.
If that was a dig at me, you’re now arguing ad hominem. It has nothing to do with the topic.
I don’t know if I’ve ever used falling off as an excuse, except at Unicon 14 when a kid walked in front of me at 28-29km/hr. As for the gearing system…it’s like saying ‘I would have finished better if I’d had a bike’.
I’m not giving an excuse, I’m stating one reason why I would have been faster with a better gearing system. (Another major reason is that the course was not well suited to 29"/44" gearing–most courses aren’t).
They mixed up my name with Chris. I started sixth from the end, just after Tue Johannsen, and beat him by about 10 seconds (I was 20 seconds behind him on the road at the end). Tue was on a short-crank 36er, and he also fell off once.
Verification: My avatar picture is a shot taken by a spectator at the start of the RTL time trial. My number is team #69, rider #2. You can check the RTL results that rider #2 (me) is the one who finished in eighth.
I’m still curious whether adding weights to the 26er rim to make it the same weight as the 36er rim would make it feel similarly stable when ridden in high gear. The science certainly suggests that the resistance to twisting of a hoop rolling at a given linear velocity is all to do with the weight of the hoop, not the size of the hoop.
In which case 150 was clearly the incorrect crank length for a guni on that course. Given that you could just pedal your guni with 114 cranks around in low gear if you wanted, it only takes one stretch of the course on which it is possible to push high gear with 114s to make the guni faster (assuming a rider with good enough shifting technique).
Wow boys slow down >_< hehe, interesting thread =D
I would just like to point pout my opinion on whethere or not a unicycle is “more” stable (only my opinion)
I have found coming from a cycling past into unicycling that my unicycle riding at a lower ability level then my mountain biking/road is more stable for the simple facts of unicycle.
You have to to have X amount of balance to ride a unicycle 10 feet, 20 feet, 150 feet etc, how much you start with and how much you acquire and the pace is depicted by 100’s of variables that have to to with genetics and what not but for 30 people to ride 150 feet on a unicycle will all have a similar amount of balance. (asuming they all ride it with the same efficiency and control)
anyways…
The unicycle is a tool of control and to ride it requires control, vs the bicycle is more of a momentum based learning curve and is rarely used as a “stable platform” Its just harder to to do so your more stable when you can.
Bikes don’t have an “ideal” wheel size either. But Road bikes appear to, as do BMX bikes. Unicycling has already found similar ideals, but our sport is much younger so they are still more likely to change about.
They won because they were the fastest Schlumpf riders. Also because all three were very strong riders, where most of the other teams had at least one not-so-strong rider.
RTL went beyond merely showcasing that a geared 36" was fast; everybody knew that. It showed they were still very fast on a very lumpy course. Nova Scotia is lumpy!
Yeah, all those people that ride them with ease, but say they could never ride a unicycle to save their lives.
I think you left out the biggest factor; so trains would have freedom of movement. Similar to why VHS won out over Betamax, instead of us still having both of them (though now we have neither).
A road bike is at least as different to a recumbent, as a unicycle is to a road bike. Would one claim 700c to be an ‘ideal size’ for a recumbent? I’ve yet to see one.
700c could be an ‘ideal size’ for a unicycle with multiple gears, but that is extrapolating from a completely different vehicle.
Also, why would a 700c wheel be equally suited to a 50kg, 160cm tall rider, as a 90kg, 195cm tall rider? It makes no mechanical sense. It’s probably most suited for a median sized rider, based on a Northern European population in the late 1800s, using materials and manufacturing processes available to them at the time.
Look, the UCI standard allows for wheels between 55cm and 70cm. That’s a huge range, from well under current wheel sizes to slightly over current wheel sizes. Teams with essentially limitless budgets to spend on improving equipment haven’t decided to try out 55cm wheels in race conditions, and there’s almost certainly a reason for that, since they’ve tried out all kinds of variants. At the very least we can say that nobody takes seriously the idea of wheel sizes below 26" for road racing or mountain bike racing (XC/downhill/cyclocross), or wheels at 70cm. Is it possible that 90cm wheels would be better for road bike riding? Well, it’s not entirely disproven but it seems highly unlikely.
Recumbents use wheels smaller than 700c (usually, not always) because to build a recumbent you have to compromise on wheel size because of the physical geometry of the thing. Otherwise you have to sling the rider way too high; a recumbent with 700c wheels is a big pain in the ass to mount, dismount, and stop at lights.
In terms of the logistics of the unicycle, smaller wheels are very clearly better than larger wheels; mounting a 36" is daunting for many people.
It’s not a compromise for the riders so much as for the manufacturers. There aren’t many racing wheels available outside 700c, apart from 650c. Why increase your productions costs and product range to suit someone in the 98th centile for height? 195cm tall? You’re outta luck- the UCI doesn’t let you use a bigger wheel. And chances are you’re not going to make it into the pro ranks anyway. Ditto if you are 155cm tall. Unless you’re a woman, and there’s no money in womens cycling.
Bikes (or HPVs) can clearly go faster, but the UCI has tough regulations on what constitutes a bike. Even if they allow any wheel size, the rest of the geometry and specifications (inc weight and spokes) must comply with UCI regulations.
Can you explain why, biomechanically, a 155cm tall rider and a 195cm tall rider would both consider the same sized wheels to be ideal, aside from what equipment is available to them? Proportionally a 90cm wheel might be fine for a very tall rider. But you have to scale everything else up also, including the hubs.
Recumbents use wheels smaller than 700c (usually, not always) because to build a recumbent you have to compromise on wheel size because of the physical geometry of the thing. Otherwise you have to sling the rider way too high; a recumbent with 700c wheels is a big pain in the ass to mount, dismount, and stop at lights.
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You mean it’s a really pain in the arse for a short person.
Thanks, this was my earlier point, that it’s not about what is most efficient or fastest, but about the economics; ie why spend more money to push a sport if that money won’t create more money. Bike racing is sponsored, the sponsors want to make money on their investments, so as long as their product is “seen”, then the investment works.
If anything, because the wheel and geometry is standardized, the riders are self selecting by body type and build to best utilize the standard.
If recreational biking is influenced by professional biking, both of which are limited by the available products and designs, what would motivate manufacturers to produce new standards? If anything, they want to consolidate their product lines and reduce their design costs.
To say that something is the best because if there were something better then it would be in use, well, that there would be your “straw man argument”, yup.
And arguing about efficiency when discussing unicycles is absolutel silliness.
I agree with everything you say except maybe this last point.
Efficiency- what do you mean by this, and why is it silly?
Do you mean some physical measure like energy use per distance (km/miles) travelled? And is that the only goal? A bicycle is more efficient than a car- if you look at energy consumption, but plenty of people use cars instead of bicycles for commuting because it’s faster, and allows you to carry things and other people, protects you from the weather, and at any given speed, possibly safer. A unicycle is faster and more efficient that walking or running, but not everyone substitutes unicycling for walking or running.
I don’t think it’s silly to discuss efficiency of unicycles, but it has to be taken in context of what else you are trying to achieve, and what you are comparing it to.
Unicycling as something I do, not because it is efficient in comparison to other non motorized propulsion, but because it is challenging and brings me pleasure.
I do think about ways to ride better, faster, longer, and more comfortably, but I’ll admit that these things would mostly be resolved if I rode a bike or ran.
As someone who prefers big wheels, I seem to be in the minority (except on this thread), but I’d prefer to use a big wheel all the time, hence my desire for a downgeared hub. For example, last nightI rode my 29er on leafy, rooty single track. I was “jostled about” by the unseen roots, and though I was riding trails that were too steep for a fixed 36er, a bigger wheel would have smoothed things out and made for a more comfortable ride.
I still need to build a fatter frankentire tire for my 32" (Ardent 2.4), but when it’s done I’m thinking that I’ll be riding it more for XC, so then the 29er (29 x 3" Knard) will be for tech muni, and maybe I’ll build a 29 guni for multiday rides.
My hope is that UDC or the guys who arranged for the 36" mtb tire will decide to build a 32" wheel and tire.
Can you explain why 155cm tall riders ride Cokers?
Note that weight does not scale linearly with size. By the square-cube law, increasing the size of an object from 27" to 36" increases the weight by a factor of 2.4. It’s not quite that bad with wheels because not everything scales up that much (the rim doesn’t get wider, for example), but this is the fundamental law that makes scaling up the bicycle to fit the rider not work.
You’ll have to tell all the Tour de France teams that the huge amounts of money they put into marginal gains in speed are wasteful. They should just ride cheap clunkers with logo stickers.
That’s not what “straw man argument” means. You might call it begging the question if you want to get debate dweeby on it.
Though actually there are plenty of circumstances in which a unicycle is the most efficient form of transport - mostly involving situations where having a bicycle is more hassle, due to the need to lock it up etc. If I’d been able to ride a uni when I was at uni (DYSWIDT?) I’d have used one a lot for transport as I could have just carried it inside with me.
So despite protesting otherwise, you are actually interested in efficiency. Personally I sometimes prefer the added challenge of not having everything smoothed out, hence why I sometimes ride easy off-road trails (once which are almost boring on a 26" wheel) on my 19er.
