exactly how i was..one nice 50-100 ride.. everything falls into place
Chase
You’ll find that applying the one basic everyone bleats about WEIGHT ON THE SEAT becomes even more important now. A majority of your UPDs are currently (most probably) caused by transferring your weight to your feet as your body attempts just one more correction in your dynamic balance. This causes the foot in question to ‘lock’ in the Bottom Dead Center position and your ride to come to an end.
Focus on weight on the seat and rolling the pedals over smoothly and the 100 foot mark will be far behind you.
Quick mini-update:
I won’t have a day 11 up for several days because today it’s actually starting to get really cold and sleeting and freezing rain and all that junk, and I’m not really confident enough in my skill yet to practice in that stuff.
Plus, I’m a warm-blooded Texan who can’t take anything below 30 degrees. 
Now once you get the hang of it, you’ll find it the most warming thing that you can do. I was a little chilly the other day and said to my hubby “I’m just going outside to warm up”.
Cathy
So I guess you are now a unicyclist, or as my neighbours keep calling me “some crazy nut on one wheel”. Have a blast man.
Learning to Unicycle: Day 11
It warmed up some to about 40, so I decided to go ahead and practice today.
For the first 20 minutes or so, I was doing absolutely horrible; not anything above 10 feet. I was doing everything wrong, from leaning too far forward, leaning back, sitting too straight, looking at the ground, pedaling too slow, pedaling too fast, etc. etc. etc.
Finally I started doing better, going back up to my usual 15 feet and then some 20 feet rides. After making it over 25 feet once, I decided to stop practicing in general and specifically work on a few things I was still having trouble with.
First of all, my pedal speed. This has been a big problem for me since I started riding on concrete. If I go to slow, I barely make it anywhere before falling. Surprisingly, though, a few of my 20 foot rides were riding slow, which I guess puts me at an advantage when I have to work on freestyle techniques in the next couple months. When I go too fast, I zoom out to 15-20 feet very quickly but then either one of two things happens:
a) I lean forward more to try to compensate for the wheel going so fast and overdo it and UPD, or
b) I start zigzagging from going too fast and UPD from hitting the grass or heading off the curb (although I’m getting a lot better at sliding off onto my feet ahead of time if I foresee that happening).
I focused purely on the speed for a while and actually found that sweet spot fairly quickly, and it increased my longer distance frequencies a thoroughly satisfactory amount.
I also had to work on my forward leaning just a little bit, which didn’t really take long, as I have been working on that since I started, so it didn’t take long to improve it. I found that my newfound perfect pedal speed helped to correct my leaning, which I thought was a little odd, but I wasn’t going to complain.
Last was my actual turning abilities. After tonight, I have come to the conclusion that that is what I need to work on the most if I am ever going to ride the length of my sidewalk.
There is a slight left curve in my sidewalk, just barely 10 degrees (if that), and so my body is trying to turn that little bit by itself as I approach the curve. Problem is, my body thinks the right way to do that is just to lean to the left or the right. I still need to teach myself to be able to swivel my hips instead of just leaning, but after I get that down, I think I’ll be ready to actually ride farther.
I eventually went inside after an hour because I was getting cold and a little hungry, plus it was almost dark. Oh, heh, on my very last run before I went inside, I thought I was about to fall so I took my feet off the pedals, but I somehow stayed balanced and rode forward about 7 more feet with my feet sticking out to the side and just sort of gliding. I wish I would’ve gotten that on tape. 
Tip from today:
- Don’t ride too fast; don’t ride too slow. It’ll take some experimenting on your part to get just the right speed, but it’s important to be able to find it.
The scientist within smells data, must analyze!
We see a lot of cool graphics on this forum, but not a lot of hard science.
Dudewith a sock has provided us with data of his progress so I decided to run some analyses. The graph below shows his progress in terms of his longest reported ride and the number of days he had been practicing at that point. The trend at this point is linear. The equation is that of a line that closely fits the data D.W.S. has provided. The R^2 value would be 1.0 if the fit were perfect. In the sciences, and R^2 of 0.95 is considered an excellent fit.
If the trend continues, Dude will reach 50 feet on day 14.97, the end of day 14 , or day 15.
We shall see!
All right then.
Learning to Unicycle: Day 12
I de-progressed a lot today.
About 2/3 of my practice time was spent at area ‘B’, and I was doing horrible. I really don’t know why, I just wasn’t making it more than 5-10 feet every single time. I think it might have just been because I was sorta tired and still a little sore from working over the weekend.
Not much more to say really. I eventually became so frustrated that I considered going back inside, but that “Go for it” spirit hit me hard and I decided to just move to a more comfortable zone to calm myself down; my driveway.
I enjoy practicing in my driveway a great deal, mostly because of the incline that makes it a lot easier to get going, since I find that to be the hardest part. I can just sort of let my feet follow the pedals, and spend my time worrying about my upper body balance rather than my pedaling speed. I made it the length of my driveway many times and even made it across the rest of the alley into the grass on the other side a few times. I’m not sure how long that is, maybe 20 feet…I’ll probably go measure it tomorrow.
No real new tips today, just want to reinforce the whole idea of “Don’t give up just because of a couple off-nights.” 
Learning to Unicycle: Day 13
I am still calming down from my adrenaline rush from today’s practice.
Allow me to elaborate.
I spent my whole ~75 minutes in the driveway/alley today. For the first 15 or so minutes I just rode the length of my driveway, but since I was actually doing good today, I found myself running into either the fence or the garbage can on the other side of the alley. I was pleased with how good I was doing already, but I figured that now that I could easily ride that distance down my driveway, I needed to work on an entirely new ability to me; turning.
I mounted, took a deep breath, and starting riding. I made the mistake of starting to turn much too early and bailed early on, so I tried to change that. However, I wound up overdoing it many times, and I wound up starting to ride up the opposite alley driveway (of course, that made me feel even more confident, since I managed to ride a little bit uphill).
So I tried to sharpen my turns a bit more, which ended up in me leaning too much to the right and forcing me to step off the unicycle. I practiced this for a while, but I was starting to get tired and was going to go inside to get a drink and possibly quit for the night, but I decided that one more try couldn’t hurt.
I got in, breathed in deep, imagined myself making the turn before falling, and starting pedaling. I found the right forward leaning angle, got into a good rhythm of speed down the driveway, and leaned very slightly to the right while trying to twist my torso at the same time. I felt like I was going in slow motion as I rounded the fence corner fairly smoothly. I prepared myself for a fall, but something happened in that split second; my body leaned back up, the unicycle straightened out under my body, and I somehow returned to the leaning position. The next 10 seconds went by in sort of a haze as I kept pedaling and eventually fell. I looked behind me and saw the entrance to my driveway at least 35-40 feet away.
It took a second before the realization of what I had accomplished hit me, and my breathing suddenly sped up as I became aware that I had just ridden down a ~15 feet driveway, turned successfully, and rode another 35-40 feet before falling.
I suddenly wasn’t thirsty anymore, and ran back up the driveway, hoping to do that again. I wasn’t successful, but I got back up there and tried again, and actually made the turn again and rode about 10 feet before falling. I was really pumped by this time and rode for another 15-20 minutes, practicing turning and riding down the alley. I think I actually made it nearly as far as that first time about 4-5 times, but I was forced inside eventually because it was getting dark, my ankle was sore from some hard landings, and my mom wanted me inside.
Today was probably my most exhilarating practice day yet, and has gotten me extremely anxious for tomorrow’s session, where I might try area ‘B’ to see if I can get the same results.
Some tips from today:
- When turning, do not actually lean your body. Although this may seem more natural to your body, all it will accomplish on a unicycle is a possibly nasty UPD.
- As a followup to tip #1, in order to turn, twist your upper body and head. Again, this will take some practice, but it’s really not too difficult, and if you turn your upper body, your head will probably naturally follow (or vice versa, if that’s easier for you (just try both)), and when your line of sight is facing a different direction, your legs will automatically try to follow.
- If your practice terrain allows it, don’t just fall immediately after turning. It’s not all that difficult to follow a successful turn with some straight riding; I found that it came almost naturally to me, and hey, it’s always good to practice your regular straight-line riding.
WHHHHHOOOOO HOOOOOO!!
Congratulations. You’re a unicyclist!
Your journal has been a great document to follow and should be a must read for other beginning unicyclists.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful and thorough posts.
Blake
How very true. It applies to other skills later on too. If it looks like you’re not gonna make it, keep going anyway and see what happens.
Ride on man!!!
Why thank you! ^^
Quick poll: Do you guys want me to keep my journal going up through me learning to freemount? Or you think I should go ahead and bring it to a close in the next day or two?
keep it going! keep it going!
I look forward to reading this! I like it! Keep it going as long as you can!
That’s one more of us and one less of them.
And yeah, please keep this thread going for as long as you learn new things on your uni. That should be the rest of your life, so be prepared to do some typing.
Great number crunching podzol…it was cool to see the linear progression, which I suspect is close to universal for new riders.
But to your prediction, the one thing it doesn’t take into account is what we see in Dude’s next post: at some point on the learning curve, things start going exponential. And that process repeats itself as the learning curve is applied to more and more skills. First you go exponential on riding…when you get to the point you can ride 50 feet, that 100 foot ride is a blink away. You have distance wired…and then start working on your freemount and it’s back to the start of the learning curve.
I wish I had kept detailed records when I first started. I should have approached it the same way I approached Home Brewing. Everything documented, with specifically-planned variations for testing purposes, results always recorded (and later consumed).
Dudewithasock, you rock. Nice thread!
You’re absolutely right. The curve does change. It’d be interesting to see in a host of beginning riders where that change occurs! It’s be reassuring for beginners to hear something liike,
“when you go over 15 feet 3-4 concutive practice days, you can expect a rapid upturn in your learning rate!”
Definitely somekind of threshold behavior. THe thing that was totally impressive to me was his recovery from the turn, not so much the distance. To me that is a very solid indication that he’s workin’ the uni rather than v.v!
Learning to Unicycle: Day 14
I considered starting on freemounting today, but I decided that I needed to be much more confident in my current skills, because even though I made a few firsts last time, I was still weak in those areas.
I spent 40 of my 50 minutes on the driveway/alley again, basically improving on what I had learned last time. It took 5 minutes or so of straight riding down the driveway to get me warmed up, and then I started working on turning again, using the same principles as last time. I made it pretty far down the alley a few times (once a little bit farther than last practice) when I realized that I was unconsciously using my fence as a guide as I was turning (although I was recovering from the turn and riding down the alley without a support). I realized that this just wouldn’t do, and that I needed to try turning with absolutely no support help.
This took many tries and several hard UPDs, but I slowly began to grasp it. It wasn’t a whole lot different than my earlier turning methods, I just had to ride a foot or two away from the fence as I went down the driveway. This made my turns a lot wider, but I was managing to keep it sharp enough to make the turn and then actually keep turning so I could go back to the center of the alley, at which point I would recover, even myself out, and ride until I fell. I was noticing a small problem at the end in which I would progressively speed up after I had ridden straight for about 30-35 feet, but this problem sort of solved itself as I forced myself to slow down just a little bit.
It had already been 40 minutes by now, and it was getting dark, so I was planning to go inside soon. I decided to try a little experiment in the short time before I had to go inside.
I walked around to the side of the house at good ol’ area ‘B’. I mounted up, breathed deeply, and starting riding. It didn’t surprise me a whole lot that I only made it about 10-15 feet. I did this for a little while, progressively making it further because of my newfound balance skills. But of course, I was forced inside before long.
Two things dawned on me after my little experiment:
-
I think one reason that I wasn’t making nearly as fast progress at area ‘B’ as I was at my driveway/alley was the width available to me. In my driveway/alley, I had at least a 250% wider area to work with, giving me room to recover fairly easily if I started to veer to one side. However, area ‘B’ is a normal-size sidewalk, which doesn’t offer a whole lot of room to fix myself without just falling so I don’t hit the grass. This is something I’m slowly learning to work with, though, because I figure it’s pretty important for later on.
-
One big thing I need to work on is gathering more momentum in those first several revolutions. The driveway’s incline made this step pretty much unnecessary, and by the time I made it to the alley, I had gathered enough momentum that my speed was much easier to maintain. Area ‘B’ is pretty much flat, providing much more work for me, but I’m starting to get used to that as well. Any tips in this area would be appreciated.
Couple tips from today:
- Make sure you’ve mastered whatever you’re currently working on before trying to learn something new. This may just be a personal preference thing to some people, but I think it’s very important to make sure you have complete confidence in your ability to do X trick before moving to Y trick.
- You might find yourself gathering too much speed as you ride longer distances. Unless this is intentional on your part, simply focus on pedaling a little bit slower so your body can catch up with the unicycle.
I read your journal every time I’m on the forum. I think I’d miss it if you were to stop.