Progress report from a beginner

General
1

So I have been riding for 3 weeks now and wanted to give a progress report and some insight on unicycle selection from a beginner.

I started with a 20" Avenir Deluxe that I bought off of Amazon for $45. I learned to ride it in a few hours and spent a week trying to ride around my neighborhood with a goal of being able to ride Muni someday. The biggest difficulty that I had was training for any longer than a half of an hour due to muscle fatigue. Keeping weight in the seat was extremely hard for me and I had bruises up and down my thighs every night.

After feeling confident it was time to step up to a Muni, I bought a 26" Nimbus Muni. Wow, what a difference, the seat was amazing. My progress skyrocketed and I found myself able to go further and further. As I got tired my body would naturally start putting more weight in the seat and it all started to click.

Then I got back on my 20" one night to start trying to learn to idle and I was surprised that I just couldn’t get comfortable on it. The reason was because the seat would not allow me to sit on it because I am assuming that is was designed for a child (I had no idea what one should be shaped like for an adult). The bruises that I got earlier were from the flare out at the nose on the Avenir. I put my Nimbus Gel on it and really enjoyed working out with it in the driveway.

I am not trying to turn anyone off on getting the Avenir to start out with because other than the incompatiblity of the seat with my body, it is an excellent value and the chrome is beautiful.

I do attribute the hard time that I had learning to relax was due to me not being able to sit in the seat properly when I initially learned and it was difficult to get over that once I had the proper set up.

Now I am focusing my training on learning to ride with one hand on the seat and getting around my very uneven yard.

This forum is directly responsible for my quick learning curve. Thank you to everyone for sharing your knowledge.

Mark

2

Yippee!!!

Love to hear these stories.

Keep up the great work!

3

Cool, sounds like the fun is just beginning. :smiley:

4

Good job!! I also found that learning a junky saddle makes a nimbus saddle seem like the most comfortable thing in the world.

5

The greatest thing about riding the Uni is that you are always learning to ride it. The joy of mastering something new can happen almost every day.

6

I had the same issue on my old sun, It made my old velo seat feel like a couch!

7

My first Uni was from the same company and had the same Junior saddle.

After advice from Roger @UDC I replaced it with a Nimbus Gel and progress improved rapidly.

I’ll be swapping that Nimbus Gel onto my new Uni after I cut the seat-post down a few inches, as it is so comfortable.

8

The first time I tried to ride I got horrible bruises just like you, which were caused by friction from the denim.
I then tried tight, slippy cycling shorts under my jeans which prevented bruising from then on (which had the added advantage of avoiding crushed nuts, by keeping them out of the way).