where is it?
Saline, Michigan.
I imagine nothing much has really happened yet as it starts today. I’m leaving to go there in about 2 hours. If there is a computer in the hotel, I may beable to provide a few updates.
Any big names going?
Jas
Why isn’t there a livestream? Like there was at FLUCK?
Not sure what is meant by big names…but I have met, (not in order of perceived fame), John Foss, Connie Cotter, Spencer Hochberg, Jeff Groves, (for the second time), Darren Bedford, (also for a second time), John and Amy Drummond of UDC, Gilby, (played hockey against him), Irene Genelin, Tommy Thompson, Sem and Teresa Abrahams, (also not for the first time), and probably lots of others who I didn’t know were big names.
Also saw, (but did not meet), Amy Shields, Ryan Woessner, Andy Cotter, and lots of others who I didn’t know were big names, but who were big in my eyes because of the great talent I witnessed.
Hella good time, still not over as there are yet two days to go. Very glad I came, it’s my first big unicycle event and I’m getting a ton of good things from this experience.
Trials and Street competitions start tomorrow.
Freestyle is done. Amy Shields won expert female, as expected.
Spencer got 6th place in advanced freestyle. I got 9th. Gilby’s dad got 5th. No clue who got first.
I’m pretty stoked for NAUCC next year. haha. Couldn’t make this one because of FLUCK. Next year though I’m pretty sure the kids from Mandan (Keaton, Myself, Dallas) and Kelly Hickman will through down at NAUCC. ha. It’ll be rad.
-Shaun Johanneson
do you no where it will be next year?
I think NAUCC will be in south Dakota next year, but I’m not 100% sure.
Shaun, will you be going to both NAUCC and Unicon?
Next years will be in South Dakota. Here are some other results:
Expert Male: The redhead from South Dakota who belongs to TCUC and just recently passed level 10 (10th person to pass level 10) and I can’t remember his name.
Club: TCUC
Big Group: Forgot
Small Group: TCUC
Expert Pairs: Amy Shields and Ryan Woesner
Anything besides freestyle?
Yep i’ll be attended both conventions if possible next summer. I heard the dates were managable, so i’m very excited to see what happens at both.
-Shaun Johanneson
Forrrest, Racing was yesterday and today. Trials and Street are tonight. Muni tomorrow. I am not going to post all the racing results, but I will post some Trials and Street stuff later.
Bill Hugo
racing, etc
RACING
The racing portion of the NAUCC 007 was excellent. MUDders had a hard time last year bc of some bad weather, but this year, in add’n to the great weather, there was also a pretty efficient team of volunteers. As a result, riders were done with the 1500m (and 800 for the little kids) and the 400m on Racing Day 1. Then today, we rode the 100m, and ALL of the ‘fun’ races.
I didn’t get results for most of the racing and track, so I’m not sure what heights and lengths were posted for high- and long-jumps, but I can tell you that Justin Woessner is pretty fast, and so are Nick Muellerleile and Isaiah Leitz. Amy Shields won most, but not all, of her races.
1500, 400, 100
The track is sluggish, a fact borne out by the slower-than-usual winning times. For example, the 1500m race went to Justin, but his time was only 4:43 or so – quite far from the expected 4:30. In the 400m, the top 5 finishers in the expert were:
1:07.170…Justin
1:09.455…Jeff Groves
1:09.499…Isaiah
1:09.920…me
1:10.194…John Foss
As you can see, it was a hotly contested 2nd place – four of us within less than .7 seconds! That’s less than 10 feet!
The 100m went to Nick, I believe, and again, his time was pretty slow for a first-place finish. This was not a record-setting track. The only personal best I set was for the slow race!
MISC
Tomorrow is the 10k, and I’m looking forward to taking that one, tho Gilby will be fighting me for it. Fun fact: He’s gotten lost during the past TWO 10k races (winning one of them!). The 10k and muni tom’w are right near a water park! Awesome! It was also nice how the race track was in the same school as the main auditorium, so it was easy for all of us to get used to just one set of directions so far (which changes tom’w).
PUBLIC SHOW
I should mention that the public show was great. It featured a fantastic frisbee exhibition as well as some incredible Hacky Sack (‘foot bag’) work from the same dude. Sem and Teresa Abrams did their usual amazing show, tho this time Sem finished by riding his 14’ (we all thought it was 20’!). He’s incredible. The MCs were jugglers and were quite funny. The raffle went fast… well, as fast as I could get it to go. Darren Bedford won the top prize! The top 5 or 6 prizes were all donated by our friends the Drummonds at unicycle.com.
FUN
Speaking of which: another funny moment was in the relay race today when John Drummond had to hand off not only the baton but also his unicycle to his eldest son, who was running second leg in the race – they only had one uni between them! As you may know, the relay race is not really too serious! The last team to finish was comprised of my son (7), a boy named Austin, and two kids under 6 (GracieLu and Gregory). The little ones were adorable.
TRIALS
I didn’t participate in trials or muni, but the trials area looked great, featuring many cool apparatus including a car.
Well, it’s off to (late!) bed. So far, a great NAUCC!
next year’s NAUCC: Brookings, SD?
Oh, I should mention that my guess is that the NAUCC 008 is being held in Brookings, SD. I’m not sure about the city, but it’s an educated guess. It’s supposedly going to happen from July 5-12, with time included for sight-seeing since there is so much cool Americana in the area.
I’m hoping it’s in Brookings bc that city is “only” 23 hours from NYC by car. If it’s further west than that, it ain’t gonna happen for my family.
Hey I just got back from NAUCC, they won’t announce Street Results until tomorrow, but for expert trials its:
- Joel Burgess (sp?) - 25 lines
- Brent Garrett - 24 lines
- Jon Atwell - 24 lines
I’m not too sure about anything after that though.
(Jon and Brent did a tie breaker for 2nd place and Brent one. Sorry if I spelled any of the above names wrong, I’m pretty tired.)
What was the turn out for street, any one we might know taking part?
Jas
I don’t know who you know. Many of the Street competitors were among the top Trials riders, though some were more Street specialists. Spencer Hochberg was among them. It got dark during the competition so it was a little strange toward the end, when it was hard to see what the last few riders were doing.
If you wanted to see some totally exhausted riders, that was the place to be. About an hour after a long Trials session, many of the same riders had to compete again! Fortunately the temperature was dropping at that point, as the high was around 91, with decent humidity.
The judges couldn’t see what they were writing at the end. They used a newer judging system, which I believe was borrowed from BUC? We may change the IUF rules to that system as it was made up by riders with more Street experience.
Obstacle Course:
My wife Jacquie did her traditional role of timing the whole thing, with a little help from me and others while we went to lunch. She’s asleep now, but I’m pretty sure the winning time was 21.02 by me, a pretty amazing time considering my lack of practice. Also better than all my practice runs, which never happens! I think second place overall would be Pele Schramm, at 22 point something. Most other times were 23 seconds and up.
I didn’t feel the track was slow, but I don’t ride tracks that much anymore. I think it was more a case of the riders not being as fast this year. I don’t think we can blame the weather compared to the last two years (Memphis and Salt Lake City). Both were pretty hot and/or humid, though we did get some rain on the racing last year to help cool things down. I just don’t think there was as much race training going on this year.
Next year we’ll have at least a 100 and 1500m race for 700c wheels (29"). Hopefully that will turn graduallly into a move to that wheel size for the track, while keeping the smaller wheels for the kids. We won’t race 36" wheels on the track because they don’t work well there. Try it if you don’t believe me.
The riders in the street comp were:
Jon Atwell
Jeff Liechti
Forrest Rackard
Pele Schramm
Brent Gerrett
Jordan Spera
Jacob Spera
me
Everyone was really exhausted, the people who did sport trials had more time to rest between events.
I have all the runs on video and I will post all of them when we get the results. Jordan’s last run was so dark I can barely tell someone is riding around and my tape ran out 1 minute before the end.
Kkkkkkkkkk
The 10k was held today. So were the muni event and the uphill/downhill rides. I only attended the 10k (and also the nearby water park!).
I heard that the affianced couple, Andy Cotter and Irene Genelin, came in 1st and 2nd in the muni. That’s cool – they’re both excellent riders – but they both said they were surprised by the 1-2 finish.
The 10k was excellent. The track was about a mile long and was NOT a flat oval, so it took some skills to negotiate certain curves and some stamina to make it up the hills (especially the curvy uphills near the finish – DANG, that was a tough finish!). Three of us rode gunis (Schlumpf 29"), and the other fast finishers were on Cokers with various crank sizes (one dude had 3 1/2" cranks – I couldn’t even mount his Coker, and I bet he was dying on the uphills!).
I got off to a great start and led for a minute, but then this young fellow Rob Something caught me on a straightaway and I never saw him again till he was standing at the finish line. Gilby (Kevin Gilbertson, that is) and Irene were with me for awhile, but they never caught up. The person who was on my tail on-and-off for the whole race was none other than the ageless Dave White (well, his actual age is 52, but he’s amazing). He has a guni, too, so 2nd place was a battle of the gunis for most of the time. Suddenly at the end of the final lap, out of nowhere comes Canadian Jeff Groves. He passed Dave and then took me on a curvy section where I almost went off the pavement. I take it back – I DID go off the pavement, but to my surprise, I didn’t go off my guni. I should note that Jeff didn’t cause me to do this by edging me over or anything – I just took the turn too fast while attempting to forestall the inevitable.
The finish was:
- FAST(22-23mins?)… Rob Something
- 25-ish… Jeff Groves
(both on Cokers!) - 25:25… Me
- Dave White
- Gilby
(all three on Schlumpfs)
6-8. Not sure of the order, but Irene, and John Foss were there
Great race, everyone!!! I now have respect for Jeff Groves’s riding. He’s fast in the short races and in the marathon, beating in both the 100m and the 10k. Watch out for Jeff!
Take care, everyone. Your reporter, signing off…