Bruce won’t blow his own horn so I will.
Bruce Dawson just turned forty. He did the annual Seattle to Portland Ride (over 200 miles) on a Coker in two days. He finished it yesterday. This is an incredible feat. Prior to the STP he did an 82 miler and a 77 miler. Hopefully he will fill you in on the details. I can’t begin to fathom that kind of determination and endurance. Congratulations, Bruce. You’ve done it once and you don’t ever have to do it again.
That’s very impressive - congratulations Bruce! How did the other unicyclists do? Jack Hughes told me that he was doing it again this year. Who else? Several of us considered coming up from California to do this ride but for various (wimpy) reasons, none of us made it.
—Nathan
Not sure what happened to Jack, but Bruce was the only unicyclist…the sole representative from the “People That are Crazy Enough to Ride STP on a Unicycle Club”, which I believe is now up to a whopping three members.
Bruce is understandably tired, but hopefully he’ll join in on this thread soon so we can stop talking about him like he wasn’t in the room :).
wow Seattle to Portland, Maine? Amazing!!!
STP story–long
After a year of planning it worked. At around 6:10 PM Sunday I rolled in to Holladay Park in Portland and cracked open a bottle of champagne, having left Seattle at 7:10 AM the previous morning. The vital statistics are:
204 miles
20:40 of saddle time
26:30 of road time
This gives me an average riding speed of a bit less than 10 mph. I’d hoped for more, but it sure is hard to maintain a good pace the second day. The first 40 miles on Saturday I managed a riding average of 11.4 mph. The first 40 miles on Sunday my riding average was 9.2. You’ll notice that the Sunday speed is a tiny bit slower.
I’ve written up a ‘brief’ story of the ride. I only included the highlights, but with 26:30 of road time there are bound to be quite a few highlights.
I woke up on Saturday at an ungodly 5:30 AM, had a quick but substantial breakfast, and headed off to the University of Washington. After sitting in STP car traffic for half an hour I made it to the start line. The ride got off to an inauspicious start as it took me four tries to mount my steed. As I headed off I noticed my body felt oddly jittery–either too much sugar from breakfast, or perhaps just excitement from the ride.
Over the first few miles the jittery feeling gradually disappeared and was replaced by seat discomfort. Five miles into the ride I felt like I’d been riding for fifty miles. This is not a good sign and I started to wonder how I could possibly do this ride. I rarely adjust the pressure in my air seat and I’d actually considered leaving my pump in my support vehicle in order to save weight, but luckily I’d changed my mind. I stopped and added more air to the seat and suddenly I felt quite comfortable–disaster averted. Over the rest of the ride I was frequently adjusting the seat pressure, trying to find the perfect pressure, and experimenting with varying the pressure in order to spread out the wear and tear on my body.
The next forty miles were uneventful. I stopped more than I really like to but my speed was good and I was feeling good. I was enjoying the view from up high, talking to some of the cyclists and watching the miles tick off. I was eating, drinking, and taking salt tablets in order to keep my body working properly.
“The Hill” at the 43 mile mark is a legendary 7% grade that goes for a mile. It’s not really that bad a hill, but you can’t argue with a legend. This was one of the highlights of the ride for me. The really fast cyclists were far ahead, so I was riding with cyclists who were, once you removed most of their gears/coasting/brakes advantage, not as fit as I was. So I toasted them. Nobody passed me on The Hill and I probably passed sixty or more cyclists. It was very fun. It’s worth unicycling the STP just for that.
Shortly after The Hill some jerk drove buy and yelled out rude remarks urging me to get off the road and questioning my sexual orientation. These remarks always perplex me, and make me sad. I don’t know why some young men have so much anger, or inability to accept somebody different. It doesn’t bother me; it just makes me worry about them. This was the only negative comment I heard on the ride and it was completely overwhelmed by the hundreds or thousands of encouraging comments from other riders, drivers, and pedestrians.
Shortly after The Hill I pulled a muscle in my right leg. It wasn’t a bad muscle pull, but it was a nagging twinge every time I flexed that leg muscle, and I’m not good at riding one footed with my left foot. For the second time I started worrying about whether this was going to work.
When I got to the 53 mile mark my wife Helen and my daughters were waiting for me. We sat on the grass in the sun, ate the food that Helen had packed, and loaded my backpack for the next section. My leg was still bothering me a bit, and Helen said I looked terrible. I made it about ten miles before deciding that I needed to do something to improve my energy levels and reduce my seat discomfort. I stopped and added air to my seat, took an ibuprofen, and slurped up a package of Lava Gu. One of these changes—combined with a few minutes out of the saddle—did the trick. I resumed riding and I felt like a new man. My pulled muscle stopped hurting, I was riding fast, and I was back on track.
At a couple of minutes past 7:00 PM I rode in to Centralia, the halfway point on the ride. At 102 miles this was my longest ride ever, on a bicycle or a unicycle. Helen and my daughters Maria and Sarah were there waiting for me with barbecued chicken, watermelon, and other tasty food. Many cyclists had set up tents in the park and were getting massages, drinking beer, watching the Tour de France, and generally having a great time. However, with my slower average speed I couldn’t afford to stop for long. I needed to get a head start on the second half of the ride if I was to finish. So, after a brief rest I remounted and headed off.
I was now one of the few riders left on the road. I didn’t see a single rider the rest of the day. For the first time I had to pull out my map and pay attention to the Dan Henry’s painted on the road. There was a brief period where I was convinced I had missed a turn because I’d been riding for several miles and had yet to reach a turn that was supposed to happen about two miles earlier. It turns out that that the STP mileage calculations are not completely accurate. I suspect they fudged the numbers in order to make Centralia’s park exactly the midpoint. It’s really only 100 miles, which is confusing, and a discouraging discovery. Despite the worry that I’d missed the turn I didn’t turn around and I soon realized that I was still on the route.
A lone unicyclist in the middle of nowhere sticks out more than a unicyclist surrounded by bicyclists so I started getting more random comments from pedestrians. In Napavine I managed a brief and amusing conversation with a young man loitering in the center of town.
Loiterer: Hey, it’s a unicycle!
Me: (wave)
Loiterer: Dude, are you totally crushing your radial vein?
Me: (wondering if his question is anatomically accurate) Yes I am!
Loiterer: Dude, you’re never going to get wood again!
Me: (heading around the corner out of town) It’ll be fine in a few days!
Loiterer: (laughter fading off into the distance)
Male bonding–it’s a wonderful thing.
My destination was the outskirts of Winlock: 119.6 miles into the ride. Helen and I had discussed this on our cell phones and I expected that she was there already. About four miles out of Winlock I got a call from Helen–one of those useless calls where each person says a garbled “Hello” a few times before the connection is lost. I’d managed to unicycle out of coverage just as the call started. I didn’t worry about it because I assumed she was just checking to see where I was, and I was fast approaching her.
Around this time it started getting dark. I turned on my flashing rear light, held a bike light in my hand, and continued on. Two STP safety patrol cars pulled alongside to make sure I had proper lighting and to check that I was okay. In order to ensure my safety–and probably because not much else was going on—one of them followed me all the way to Winlock, lending extra light, and ensuring that nobody ran me over. I’m sure I would have been fine–my light was sufficient to see obstacles, and my rear flasher made me feel relatively safe–but I certainly didn’t complain. Riding at night is more stressful and dangerous, and it was good to know that if I rode into the ditch I wouldn’t lie there until morning.
I got to Winlock and found that Helen wasn’t there. Oops. Apparently she had been calling to say that she was lost. I still had no coverage so I borrowed a cell phone from the volunteer car that had been tailing me and called her. We talked for about thirty seconds before–surprise–she drove into the cone of silence that surrounds Winlock. In our brief conversation I told her that I was half a mile into Winlock but I wasn’t sure how much she had heard. After fifteen minutes of waiting the volunteers started driving me back along the route, looking for Helen. We found her at a gas station using a pay phone to call my cell phone, and feeling quite frazzled by being lost and then thinking that she’d lost me. It was a powerful reminder of how valuable cell phones are on a ride such as this, and how frustrating it can be when coverage fails you just when you need it.
My final stopping point was 120 miles, and I suspect this will be my all-time one day unicycle record.
It was close to 11:00 PM by the time we got to our hotel, so by the time I’d showered, eaten some more, had some more to drink, figured out how to jury rig my laptop as an alarm clock (what kind of hotel has neither wake-up calls nor an alarm clock) it was pretty late. I set my laptop to play “Walking On Broken Glass.mp3” at 5:30 AM and did my best to sleep.
Annie Lennox woke me in the morning and I had a quick breakfast, including toast from the toaster that Helen had helpfully packed. Then Helen drove me back to Winlock to resume the ride. Our hotel was actually about 20 miles closer to Portland than Winlock and it was awfully tempting to skip that section. Who would know? However, I decided that I didn’t want to disappoint me, Helen, or God, so to Winlock we went.
I hopped on my unicycle and rode about half a mile before deciding my seat had too much air in it. I’m not sure how I’d managed to ride it the previous night, but it was lifting me up so high that I was worried about getting calf cramps from stretching my legs so much. So, I stopped to let out a bit of air. I was careful to stop on a downhill in order to make remounting easier. It was a good idea, but not sufficient.
As unicyclists we all know that a failed attempt to mount a unicycle–especially a Coker–doesn’t count as a fall. If you go on a long ride and have a few failed attempts to get on then you can still say, with a clear conscience, that you had no UPDs. Well, I tested the limits of this rule that morning. Despite my perfect downhill mounting point I managed to have probably my worst Coker fall ever, while mounting. At roughly zero miles per hour I fell suddenly and violently forward, landing on my hands and knees. My hands were lightly scraped and both knees were bleeding. Helen was right behind me at the time and she said that at that point she was very skeptical about my doing the remaining 84 miles. I was feeling a bit shaken, but too stubborn and proud to admit any weakness. However, after a couple more failed tries to mount I used the van as a leaning post to get on. Mounting a Coker with 5” cranks when you’re tired is a real pain, and this reality guided my dismounts for the rest of the day. No matter how tired or sore I felt, I would never stop unless there was a steep downhill, a well placed leaning post, or a burly cyclist who could help me get on.
Other unicyclists have done the STP before, especially Jack Hughes, and throughout Saturday and Sunday I was reminded that all unicyclists look alike. I was greeted several times with comments like “it’s good to see you again”, “I was wondering when we’d see you”, or even “Hi Jack”. I even had a long conversation regarding this with the official photographers. They started by greeting me with “you’re later than usual” and then, after I’d pointed out that they were confusing me with somebody twenty years younger, they started listing various other ways that they then realized I was different from Jack–shorter hair, taller, more handsome, etc. It’s amazing how long a conversation you can have at 10 mph if the road is quiet.
If The Hill is the defining terrain of Saturday then The Bridge is the equivalent for Saturday. The Lewis and Clark Bridge across the Columbia has a reputation of being harder than it looks, and it is a huge bridge with a fair chunk of vertical climb. Because the bridge is narrow and crowded the organizers make cyclists wait until there is a huge group–probably 500-1,000 riders–and then they shut the bridge to traffic in one direction and escort the riders across. My one concern was about riding on a reasonably steep hill (some sources claim it’s a 9% grade) packed in with a thousand cyclists. It certainly could have been a bad ride, and if I’d fallen on the uphill there would have been no chance to remount. But, it went well. It was a bit slower than I would have liked, definitely crowded, and occasionally I had to dodge an unpredictable and slow biker, but overall it went smoothly. On the downhill side I just kept to the right and let the lazy cyclists coast past me without pedaling. Wimps.
Throughout the day I kept reminding myself how far I’d gone. One tenth of the distance for the day. Two thirds of the total distance. Half of the distance for the day. But it was still sometimes hard to keep going. My average speed was down from Saturday which meant it was taking me more saddle time to make the distance, and some estimates were showing me not making it to the finish line until 7:00.
At 175 miles, after hours of rolling hills, I decided I needed another performance boost. At a food stop where I met up with my loyal family in the support mini-van I pulled out my secret weapon: longer cranks. It takes just a few minutes to switch from 5” to 6” cranks (having pedals pre-attached to the longer cranks helps) and the extra 20% of torque was a godsend. Suddenly I could free mount on level ground again, I didn’t feel like I was constantly on the edge of falling, and my speed actually increased. This surprised me at first, but it does make sense. Short cranks are great when you’re going fast. They really come into their own at 12 mph and higher. At 9 mph they are completely pointless because your speed is no longer cadence limited, and the longer cranks force you to waste more leg strength on balance. I probably should have switched to longer cranks earlier–like at the beginning of the day, or maybe even Saturday evening. I am still learning how to best adjust the myriad variables in endurance unicycling.
At the beginning of the day, faced with riding farther than I’d ever ridden in one day prior to Saturday, I sometimes wondered whether I would be able to finish. With less than thirty miles to go and a brief burst of enthusiasm from the shorter cranks there was no longer any doubt: I was going to finish this ride, and my only concern was wrapping it up as quickly as possible. The last thirty miles were long and hard, but basically uneventful.
Just a few blocks from the end began the highlight of the ride. My daughters Maria and Sarah were waiting, with their unicycles, ready to ride to the finish line with me. It was an amazingly powerful moment. As we rode through the blocked off streets the crowd was cheering us wildly. They were cheering everybody, but a unicyclist who makes it to the finish line gets an extra loud cheer. A unicyclist with two beautiful and talented daughters as a unicycle honor guard drove the crowd completely wild, and I felt like I was the king of the world as I rode triumphantly, giving high fives to my subjects. It was indescribably powerful, and I still get choked up thinking about it. I was again incredibly grateful to Helen for being there to support me, and thinking of bringing the girls’ unicycles. I was also thankful to her for being there to greet me, and for handing me a bottle of champagne to pop up open and sloppily drink.
The moral support from the crowd at the finish line was amazing, but the moral support along the ride was no less important. A huge number of the cyclists that passed me–and many of the cyclists that I passed–had powerful words of support. Throughout the ride I had hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of people say “you’re amazing”, “that’s incredible”, “you’re my hero”, and “you go boy!” If such comments make you feel conspicuous or uncomfortable, don’t do a ride like this. But if they buoy you up, as they did me, then they can be the force that sustains you and pushes you to keep on going. These comments, and the dozens of brief conversations about the realities of endurance unicycling, helped to distract me from the discomfort, and focus my thoughts on the monumental personal achievement of each pedal stroke.
Of course the support of my family was crucial. Unicycling the STP is hard, and it would be foolish to do it without a personal support vehicle. My family was incredibly understanding and selfless and I couldn’t have done it without them.
Throughout Saturday I fielded a wide range of questions, but the number one question was “Are you riding all the way to Portland?” To this I answered some variation of “yes”, “I think so”, or “here’s hoping.”
On Sunday the questions continued, but the number one question shifted dramatically to “Did you ride all the way from Seattle?” It made me very happy to be able to answer with an unambiguous “Yes!”
Another very common question was whether I had difficulty on the uphills. This shows a shocking lack of understanding of the difficulties of unicycling. I would quickly explain that the inability to coast made downhills and flats difficult, but that uphills were where I crushed the spirits of weakling bicyclists by maintaining my speed while they slowed down. Usually I phrased it more politely than that, but you get the idea.
When people asked me if I had done the STP before I replied that this was my first time–and my last time. The ride is so demanding, and so long, that I’m not convinced I want to do it again. The last fifty miles was incredibly brutal. If I did it again it would be to do it faster and better, but the equipment limits how much improvement I could achieve. If I were to do it again I think I would use a 1.5:1/1:1 shiftable 29” unicycle. This would give me a 20% higher top speed, while letting me cope with hills and tired legs more easily. Perhaps most importantly, the lower seat would let me get on more easily, thus removing a psychological barrier. This is all speculative–I don’t have enough miles on Blue Shift to say for sure–but I think that a Purple Phaze style unicycle is too much for endurance riding, and a lower seat is very tempting. Purple Phaze is an awesome sprinting machine, but inappropriate for endurance.
I’m glad I did it, but I wouldn’t encourage others to do it. Specifically, I wouldn’t encourage harper, tomblackwood, or Lars Klausen to do it, because I think I might be the oldest person to unicycle the STP and I’d hate to lose that distinction. It is a really tough ride, the training demands are substantial (I didn’t train enough), and you have to be pretty compulsive or foolishly proud to stay in the saddle for the ~20 hours that it takes a mere mortal to finish the ride. 114,000 pedal strokes in two days is not a normal thing to do. I have a whole new respect for Lars Klausen and Ken Looi, who did STP level distances in less than twenty four hours, and for Jack Hughes, who does the STP on a unicycle most years.
I’m writing this on Monday evening, after an adequate nights sleep. My body is gradually returning to normal, and I feel strong, healthy, and ready to face any challenge.
And now, off to London (on a plane, not a unicycle).
P.S. I just heard back from Lars Klausen. He said congratulations and then said “Maybe we can do it together sometime”.
You know, it actually sounded kind of tempting…
Way to go Bruce!
Your escort to the finish is so cool. I thought finishing the STP by tandem with Andrea four years ago was emotional, I can only imagine how you felt.
Bruce, thanks for a fantstic write-up. What a ride! You are some kind of animal for sure. You have trouble mounting sometimes yet you do 120 miles in a day?! WOW! Your comments about short cranks being a detriment at slower speeds when tired are interesting. I never thought about it that way, but it sounds right to me.
I’m curious (probably all the Coker riders are) if you’re right about the Purple Phaze being too much for long endurance rides. I sort of suspected the same thing, but it will take someone putting in enough time in the saddle to really know.
One of the things that made me end up deciding not to do the STP this year was that I wouldn’t’ve had a support crew like you did. It sounds like having your family there was a key factor in your success. That must’ve been incredible when the 3 of you crossed the line. Do you have a photo of that momentous event?
Congratulations again - you’re the man!
—Nathan
Re: STP story–long
Thanks for taking the time to write that awesome story. This might be a good one for a future issue of On One Wheel, the newsletter of the Unicycling Society of America. Interested?
Because they have 1" penises (sorry, kids). And they’re rude. This may not actually be true, but I find it entertaining to think so. More realistically, they are lashing out because they see someone doing something they don’t believe would ever be possible for them. Too bad.
That’s one of the funniest quotes I’ve ever heard of from a non-rider! He must have been a cyclists, or somehow connected to the medical field. What a strange little conversation to have with a total stranger as you ride by!
The kind where you need one. Murphy’s law of travel. Since I don’t trust unfamiliar clock-radios and have been burned by failed wake-up calls, I always keep a travel alarm clock in my travel-kit. It’s about 2 x 2 x 1/2", has a snooze feature, lights up in the dark, and tells the room temperature. Those features make it good enough to put up with the frustrating setting process it has…
With more practice you should get better at this, though I can’t well speak for the morning after a 120 mile ride…
I think you meant “shorter” there. I never thought about the advantage of longer cranks for riding on level ground when very tired. It seems to make sense!
I have felt this as well. I get energy from all the people who offer kind words, as I do from an audience that’s being entertained and shows it, when I’m “on” in a show.
Never underestimate the power of a conversation or other distraction to take your mind off the 114,000 pedal strokes you’re not yet finished with. I’ve never ridden a distance like yours, but I have experienced this on the long ride over the Verezzano Narrows Bridge in New York, in the 5-Boro Bike Tour with about 20,000 other riders. That bridge, after 30 miles of riding (on the old route), is a long climb of at least 200’. Ouch. But I remember riding along with someone on a bike and talking the whole time, and I barely noticed the climb.
I get that sort of thing all the time. It’s especially funny when people ask it at places like, for example, the Downieville Downhill. Once you start down the trails from the drop-off point, there’s really noplace to go but to finish the 14+ miles and 4000’ descent to Downieville. Situations like that lead to questions like “Do you go all the way?” Lots of potential fun with replies there…
Awesome wording!
And if not for any other reason, that’s the reason people should try things like your ride. It’s always good for the soul to do something impossible from time to time. 
Congratulations again on a huge ride!
With luck there will be an attached photo of me riding across the finish line. You can see my daughters to the right (my left) in blue shirts, riding their unicycles. Bubbles are streaming through the air, and there are hundreds of people cheering.
I would like to write up the story for OnOneWheel. I’m planning to contact the editors soon.
For the free mounting I really should be better–I’m a bit over 6’ tall which should make it easier, but I’ve never learned to do a rolling mount. Normally I get on fine, and with 6" cranks I’m always fine, but I do find it harder when I’m tired. It’s a big jump up. I really don’t know how shorter people do it.
Regarding using Purple Phaze for long distances, I did do a 40 mile ride on PP a few weeks ago. I found that my average riding speed was better, but my overall speed was lower. It was so exhausting that I had to keep stopping. It was like being forced to sprint all the time.
That would improve somewhat once my reflexes were fully adapted to Purple Phaze (which probably takes over a hundred miles of riding) but I still think it would be too exhausting.
I think that must have been situational. Bruce is one of the stronger, faster Coker riders I’ve ever seen, and was free-mounting PurplePhaze right off the bat when it had a 1:1.89 gearing.
I’ve noticed on longer rides that free-mounting takes more energy out of me than anything else. If I know I’m going to be doing a long section w/o dismounting, I like to mount with the help of a post or something so I can get everything situated correctly before I start pedaling, versus trying to get my foot (and other) positions adjusted as I’m pedaling.
Awesome picture. What a beautiful little entourage!
Very little writing should be needed; if you want you could edit what you already did, but it read pretty good to me. All the would need is pictures. A picture of Jack Hughes to represent past riders might be nice as well; I’m sure I can get someone to send me one of those.
The easiest way to get on a big unicycle is with a rolling-static mount. Hopefully you aren’t doing a rollback, that must be the hardest way with such a big, heavy wheel, especially with short cranks.
The mount I’m describing has all the ingredients of a rolling mount, but the wheel doesn’t actually roll while you’re mounting. It stops, with the pedals roughly level, while you continue forward.
Congratulations!!
And thanks very much for sharing the story. Truly inspiring!
Bruce,
You are the man!!! Awesome write-up. I was smiling while you described the comments you received, and the emotion that you felt as you crossed the finish line.
I am WAY impressed.
–Irene
Nice write up and ride. Super accomplishment, were there many hills besides the one on Saturday? Crossing the finish line with your daughters is so epic, congrats on the long ride!
Bruce,
Your an inpiration to me and many others. CONGRATULATIONS on an amazing feat of endurance and determination.
FYI: I have some bad news for you. Your calculation for pedal “strokes” is not correct. I don’t want to sound picky but unless my math is off, your 200 mile ride was the product of approximately 228,566 pedal “strokes” and 114,283 wheel “revolutions”.
Extremely impressive…extremely!
I’ll just echo the responses… super job!
I really like your technique of changing saddle pressure regularly. Perhaps a saddle could be designed to change shape in a regular way with pressure to shift pressure points intentionally. Then all we need is fingertip control on the handle…
Yet another wrinkle on the crank length issue… nice!
It’s reasonable to expect several hundred miles to get used to a geared unicycle in a fundamental way. I would expect that somewhere in the higher 50s or lower 60s (gear inches) would be an optimal size for distance riding, given a lighter tire/tube than the current Coker versions. Remember that you are also adapting to saddle, crank length, differing leg/wheel speeds, and PP’s different body position.
Anyway, this is an amazing ride, Bruce! And the girls at the end is simply wonderful. Thanks for taking the time to create such an engrossing writeup.
That is amazing!
You are amazing!
I have only gone as far as 10 miles on my 29er, something bigger would be very nice, but I guess i’ll have to wait 
I believe Jack Wiley has a picture of an air seat in The Unicycle Book. IIRC it’s a Schwinn air seat with two or three bulbs that are used to pump up blood pressure cuffs. The bulbs were just hanging down from the seat. The idea was to be able to vary the pressure in different parts of the seat. One bulb would pump up the middle, one bulb would pump up the rear, etc. The pressure in various parts of the seat could be varied durring the ride to help keep the blood flowing. I don’t know how it worked in practice or how it would work compared to the newer styles of air seats.
Re: Seattle to Portland Ride 2005
What a super ride! And what a super writeup! The technical comments
about the varying air pressure and the crank length issues were
valuable and made a lot of sense. To read about the support of your
family was moving, especially where you wrote about your daughters
joining you for the last bit.
I ride like a princess. - john_childs
Mounting a coker
I don’t do a rollback. I do a non-rolling static mount. The only tough part is doing a perfectly accurate jump up and forwards. If I have a downhill or if I stand on a curb then the jump is much easier, but a tiny uphill, or tired legs, makes it very unreliable.
I’ll have to devote some time to learning a rolling-static mount. On training rides I simply didn’t get off very often, but that’s a stilly restriction to have to live with.