ok in that case you’re right with the 100m and 800m. I just imagined the chance of getting a good time with those would be nihil compared to other participants.
So far I’ve been going longer trips 10-15km as I figured, the more I ride, the more at home I will be with the 24" and thus can go faster. Real sprints I find difficult and always end up having to focus on staying in balance, which then slows down.
For many people, participating in competitions is about achieving a good time. For many others, it’s about having a good time, if you see what I mean. Hence, the “other participants” are not a homogeneous group, but achieve wildly different results, and you would simply fit somewhere in between, also on 100m and 800m. Indeed, staying in balance is an important aspect of unicycle racing, I daresay for almost all riders but certainly for me as well. And yes, it holds me back from going all-out.
When I participated in my first Unicon in 2006, I was somewhat like you. I did not enter the sprint races, only the 10k (on 24"). I had only done long rides by way of training, and at Unicon achieved a time of 41 minutes. At the next Unicon in 2008, having seen the track races in 2006, I also did 100m, 400m and 800m. Of course I trained beforehand on my sprints (as well as 10k). And here it comes: I noticed that my 10k performance improved significantly because of the sprint training, I think it went down to 36 minutes.
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