The longer and longer I ride, the more it impresses my when I see people posting incredible 50 or 100 mile rides here. I recently did 22 miles and damn! It hurt at the end… a lot! I can’t imagine even riding twice that.
Do you guys that ride more than, say, 5 miles use a large diameter wheel or are you doing that on a 24" uni?
Depends on what type of riding. On some MUni rides I might do as much as 15 miles, either on my KH 24 or G26er. On road climbing rides with my 700c I average about 6-9 miles, and 20-40 mile 36er rides, including the 100+ mile 36er rides at least once per year. 
Knees.
I seem to have two issues:
1: After playing uni hockey I have overall knee pain
Seems to be related to performing the same motions over time, while the knees are actively engaged. It goes away after walking around a bit but that interferes with hockey.
2: On long distance rides, and sometimes randomly, pain between the very top of my patellas and my legs. If I push right there it’s obvious now but it took me a while to find the painful spot the first time. It happens sometimes when I haven’t even ridden for a week, just out of the blue.
Advice/diagnosis/excersises?
A similar thread was started for ‘older’ riders some time ago.
Here it is: 55+ Ride-Your-Age
It was intended to encourage riders of both sexes who were 55 and older ( 50 for female)
One attraction was that you could submit a photo of yourself with your uni and it would be digitally edited into a photo of everyone ‘virtually’ standing together. Peruse the thread to see the images as more riders joined.
It still is possible to submit photos so if anyone is keen then PM and I will give you the details
BTW I am 65 and I think I ‘unofficially’ hold the record for the oldest person to ride 100 miles in a day. I tend to do this every year and stared when I was 63. This year I am attempting 130 miles in a day ie, twice my age.
I’ll give you the same one my doctor gives me…
“You are old!”
I do most of my riding on a 29". Usually anywhere between 3 miles and up to 22 so far. But right now I only have a 29 and 20 so the choice is pretty easy to make for which one I should ride.
!st free mount today!
I did it! I actually pulled off my first free mount today. I’ve been able to come close, get up and balance, but never able to get up and ride off! Wow, that felt good!
After a frustrating session a few days ago I’ve made real progress the last couple days. I’m learning on my 20" Torker and can now consistently ride the length of my carport and the paved section of driveway (~25 feet). Today I took the uni and rode in “public” for the first time. Yikes! The local church has the biggest parking lot in town and was empty, so I practiced there. I can go quite a ways now, not very straight, wobbling, arms flailing, hips twisting; but I’m doing it!
My other big news is that my new 26" Nimbus Muni came yesterday. Wow, what a difference! It’s going to take a while to figure that thing out. Not nearly as maneuverable as the 20".
Greetings RedRockRider and congratulations.
This is quite an experience you have waiting for you with the 26" Muni. That’s real fun once you go offroad (gras, gravel, hardpack, even ground, even that is a supersmooth experience.
Welcome to the World of unicycling.
Greetings
Byc
My first uni was a 24" which I used for everything. By the time I got interested in distance riding / touring, I added bigger unis to my fleet. I now choose the wheel for the occasion. Mostly, for longer rides I’d pick a bigger wheel. But I sometimes race (and train to race) 10 km on a 24" as a required wheelsize. Also, my main MUni is 24 x 3", on which I’ve done rides up to 60 km. Summary: it depends.
First: Congratulations on the successful free mount, RedRockRider! I envy you 
Second I have a question about turning: While I’m getting pretty decent at going straight and even with the slightly curved, bumpy part of my training course, I am having trouble turning. Do you guys know any exercises that can help learning sharper 90 degree turns? I’ve been trying to ride wide circles, but the best I got was a quarter of a circle before I dismounted involuntarily 
Turning
What worked for me is looking way past the corner you want to make. I was trying to make it around 90 degree corners and kept falling. Once I began looking past the corner in the direction I wanted to go, I started making them easily. Let’s get more “old” women out there!
Good advice from Young at heart there. I’m still learning myself but turning is going pretty well for me these days. Things that seemed to help:
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Use the space you have. If you start feeling shaky in the middle of a turn, let the arc run wider but keep on pedaling. If you try to slow down to hold a tight line, you’ll UPD every time.
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Throwing in some sharp corners in the middle of turns is fine if that’s what it takes to get around. Tracing smooth steady circles is a nice goal but make stop signs until you can if that keeps you going.
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As an exercise, find a nice street without a lot of traffic and practice making lazy S-curves back and forth. That way you can bail out of a turn any time you need to and still keep on going down the road. Make each arc as deep as you can and work on the feeling of turning smoothly to one side and then the other.
Lately I’ve been working on riding the tightest circles I can as fast as I can for as many times around as I can, literally until I’m dizzy. It’s fun!
Young at heart and LargeEddie, thanks a lot for your advice.
I believe the “look where you want to go” is deeply ingrained in me since I also do a lot of motorcycle riding and you’re getting yourself into really big trouble if you don’t learn the “head and eyes” mantra. When I’m practicing tight turns on my motorcycle I’m looking almost 180 degrees ahead of my turn. The spot in front of your tire is the last place you want to look at.
For practicing, I think I should follow LargeEddies advice. My current training course is the narrow boardwalk by my house with the concrete stretch shown in the pictures below connecting the two big straight sections. While this is good in forcing smoothness (my straight lines are really straight), making a 90 degree turn on a path that is only a few feet wide is a real challenge. I think I’ll move to the more open area by the garage or in the parking lot and set up some cones to weave around. Once I’m getting better, I can move the cones closer or do offset weaves. Maybe then I can start doing circles until I get dizzy 
I’ve attached a few pictures of my practice this morning. The concrete path section is the most difficult (other than the tight 90 deg turn that I can’t even fathom to attempt yet) on my exercise course. It is the most difficult part because it is (a) slightly curved as it bends around the base of the bridge and (b) isn’t quite level and has a few half inch steps between concrete slabs. While I made it across this section four times this morning without dismounting , I haven’t been able to make the turn either towards the bridge or away from it during the few times I attempted to. May still be worth trying some more since there is only grass to land on if I don’t make it.
I’m just shy of 52. I’m not old. As I see it, I just recently passed the halfway mark. Even if that means “middle age”, I refuse to act the part.
Someday I will qualify as old in my own mind. At that time, I hope I am still riding unicycles. Doing so will continue to push that day farther into the future!
I remember you wrote a couple of years ago “I plan to ride at 100”. Has your aspiration weakened?
“Middle age” is ten years older than you are. I speak as one who is just 10 years short of middle age!
Jerry
My private name for the exercise where I ride in the smallest circle I can as fast as I can for as long as I can is “Uni-Cyclones” in honor of John. Speaking of refusing to act the part…
The idea of riding a century on a unicycle doesn’t do much to move me, but I dream of doing a pirouette one day.
My wife is still waiting for me to grow up
My daughters used to want to appear older than they were, so they were always celebrating “I’m half of …” on their birthdays. Strangely they stopped doing this when they reached their twenties I got the evil eye two years ago when I paid back my older daughter (the one who is responsible for me having started unicycling): “Happy half of fifty!”
Hello LargeEddie. Very short cranks might help you to do a pirouette i.e. 75mm cranks on a 20" freestyle unicycle.