The Seneca 7 race, coming up on 21-APR-2013 is a 77.7 mile, 7-member-team running relay race around Seneca Lake, in New York State’s Finger Lakes region. Each runner has 3 legs to run, and the team takes turns , so one might run the 3rd leg, 10th, and 17th, for example. Each runner’s total running miles will be 9-14 miles. This area of NY is incredibly beautiful, with verdant woodlands and sprawling vineyards. This will be a gorgeous race in which participate.
What makes this race special is many teams opt for green transportation to get the 6 “resting” runners to their next leg starting points. ANDThere’s an award for the most original green transport methods.
So you see where I’m going with this?
How cool would it be to get an all-uni team? It’s a long-shot, but we need to be up for 65+ miles of riding, interspersed with 3 3-to-5 mile long runs.
Sitting on my soft ass at the computer, I’m pretty far from in this kind of shape, but it’s 4 months away, so I think I could (barring injury) get there.
I might be interested. For me, the running would be the easy part; it’s the unicycling that worries me. I definitely would have to get a 36er for Christmas (I currently have a 29er) and start putting some miles on it. I’m intrigued.
Question: When running a leg, how would your unicycle be transported? Would the team have to carry it somehow while unicycling?
That’s how I feel, too. Although, I haven’t ridden much this past year, so 65 miles of riding will be non-trivial, as well. Still 4 months to train, eh?
That works if you have several riders that don’t vary much in height. It could be difficult if you have riders that differ significantly in height. I assume most people would ride 36ers which have relatively short seat posts. With a short post there is not much adjustability. It would be difficult for a tall rider to comfortably ride a uni with a low seat height.
We’re pretty far from worrying about that as of yet. But, not all the riders need to be the same height. As long as there is no single person with an much different inseam from eveyone else on the team, we’ll be fine. So, if we had a tall teammate, we’d like to have two tallish teammates. Just one would make things a little more difficult. Maybe carrying an extra post could work.
I think the rider height compatibility is the least of our logistical issues, should we get this together.
My team of 7, dubbed “Fingerlakes Rollercoaster” just finished this race last weekend. We had 7 people and 6 bicycles (maybe this doesn’t belong in the Uni) forum), but some folks here have expressed interested in my writeups, so if you’re up for a long one, here it is: http://steveyo-writeups.blogspot.com/
Steve, congrats to you and your team! That’s so cool. So after doing it on bikes are you glad the unicycle team didn’t come together? Or are we pushing for a uni team next year?
Last year, I raced the Seneca7 on a bike team. We used 6 bikes, one with a trailer for gear, clothing and food, and we all had an absolute blast
But this year I want to get some unicyclists in the race so we can at least share a uni or two as part of our “green” transportation between running legs. I.e. if we had two uni-riders, we’d be splitting the uni riding by half, having to uni 33 miles each or so, and we could take a bike for the other half of the riding miles. Three or four uni riders either eases the race by allow more bike-time and less uni-time, or allows us to have even more unicycles in our mix.
So you have to run 12 miles or so, split into three running legs, and ride the rest of the 77.7 miles race. Of the 208 teams last year, there were only 9 teams that did it on bikes. The rest of the teams just used minivans to get from one relay-leg to the next, picking up one runner and dropping off the next. Having a uni or two on our team would be huge.
Any interest this year? The race is April 27th, and it’s about 70 bucks apiece.
I’m a little interested, and just started running a little in cross training.
Does EVERYONE have to cycle and run 77.7 miles? Or just 7.7 miles x 7 people? Do we spend most of the race riding in the van?
I’m 6’4" with a 35" inseam. If we share a uni, we could just bring our seat on our long or short seat post, and have a quick release on the uni seat post.
The 77.7 miles is split into 21 sections, and each runner runs 3 relay legs which total 11 or 12 miles for the day. It’s a rotation so if you are the third runner, you run 3rd, 10th and 17th legs. Most teams ride in vehicles the rest of the time, but we did the Eco or “green” category, which meant we rode all the distance between our runs. 7 runners, 6 cycles. What I’m trying to do is get some unis in the mix. We could take turns with the uni or unis, and ride bikes the rest of the time. But yes, every one of use did three running legs and rode 65+ miles (on bikes). We carried food and extra clothes (it was cold) in a bike trailer and took turns pulling it, so carrying an extra seat/post would be easy.
This sounds like a blast. Sign me up for Team Steveyo. Let me know what I need to do, where to send checks, etc. Tomorrow I go out to buy a pair of running shoes to begin training.
It sounds very do-able, even going above-and-beyond to ride b*kes and uni for part of it. I think it would be important to begin and complete it on the uni, just for the press.
A plug for running shoe shops: Jack Rabbit is a store with the best shoe buying experience I have ever had. I would have avoided many injuries if I had bought shoes from them.
you sign in, and the sales person puts you on one of many treadmills, each equipped with video camera at the rear on your feet. You begin with yoru ordinary running shoes, then try a variety of shoes designed to increase stability, to see what really works for you.
After each running trial, she analyzes your steps with stop action and slow motion, so you can see exactly what your feet are doing. That is AMAZING, because my feet were doing some very odd stuff!
And each pair of shoes I tried on had a different impact on my stride and strike and alignment. Again amazing to see the evidence in stop action video every time. We have them in Manhattan and Brooklyn, I don’t know how far the chain goes.
Billy - I’m not sure you quite get it. Someone would always be riding the uni or unis, and the rest of us would be riding bikes, and one person always running. Perhaps one given rider could begin and end on the uni, but it might not be the same rider. We’d carry along an extra seat post in our bike trailer, so we could all take turns on the uni.
