Requirements towards the XC Race
If I sum up the requirements, then we have got by now:
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Franz
There was an orienteering event at Unicon when it came to the UK. The course was really well set-up. Basically it was a few hours long and it wasn’t (theoretically) possible to get to every checkpoint so you could ride as far, or as little, as you wanted to get as many checkpoint as you could. The chap that won must have ridden quite a few miles. It was a brilliant event.
Just to add my two cents to the Muni discussion. A few people have mentioned the races not matching the sort of riding people actually do. I’ve always seen Muni as a non competitive activity and I’m sure there will be plenty of non-competitive rides at Unicon.
Nick
The larger your task, and the more people it involves, the more chance you have of people complaining. No matter what you do. It is basically not possible to please everybody, and this is a good thing to get used to early, before it causes you too much stress. Just remember it’s your convention. The IUF provides the structure, but does not “own” it. Outside of what’s required by the rules, the local organizers have final say over what events are held, what events are added, and what events are not possible due to time, cost, manpower, etc. Then your guests (the attendees) can decide whether they want to come or not.
Some will come and still complain. Most don’t realize they are doing it, but take up too much of your time anyway. You need to know when to tell them to get over themselves and leave you alone. Especially be on the lookout for non-objective parents and coaches. They can cause the worst trouble of all. Remember the officials have the power to eject people from events, and the organizers can eject them from the venue if necessary.
Please remember the “requirements” for MUni events at a Unicon are zero. Nothing. Though the market for this area of riding has grown rapidly, the competition end has not kept up. Why? You can start by counting the number of competition events, then muliplying it by the number of age groups to be used. Then don’t forget to double that to account for male and female. The numbers are pretty staggering. So adding anything is usually hard for organizers.
MUni started as an add-on (at Unicon IV, 1988), and has been considered one ever since. I believe this needs to change. But when we talk about it here, we need to remember this is a MUni/Trials/Street-biased newsgroup, and the track and artistic areas are under-represented here. There are a lot of those people out there, and they train really hard.
However, I believe we need to re-think the relative importance of some of our events compared with their interest level around the world. And this varies greatly by country. In Japan, track racing used to be the main event, and it’s still the largest one, but Freestyle is also huge. Some countries (most notably the more recent additions) don’t do these at all and have swiftly growing communities of offroad riders.
Race length:
There is a growing number of long distance riders who would like the chance to show their power, while (until this year) the IUF still called 10k a “marathon.” On a 24" uni it kind of is, but we have bigger wheels now. When you’re riding a 29" or 36", longer distances make more sense. I love the addition of a full marathon, and look forward to the chance to try one (if I have a big enough wheel). Intermediate distances are possible as well, but if held on roads, these events are very complicated (and can be expensive) to set up.
Longer offroad events would be nice as well, for some riders. So far this is a minority of riders but their numbers will continue to grow.
Everybody please remember that a XC MUni race is not like a typical MUni ride for fun. There are many factors to consider, depending on who will be in the race. At Unicon you have to consider many things:
Ultimately, we will have different events for different levels of rider. We’re not there yet. When we do this, we’ll have to have a way to decide who can enter which ones as well.
2004 MUni events in Japan:
The organizers of Unicon 12 had very little MUni experience, and spent many months trying to nail down a location that could hold our numbers, and provide space (and permission) to do all the stuff we wanted to do. They almost had to cancel. Most Japanese unicyclists aren’t interested in MUni. They are either indoor Freestylers or track racers. Most still aren’t interested. Maybe this is due to lack of trails, or trails that are too far away from population centers. I don’t know. Notice also that at Unicon 12 there were very few Japanese competitors on the MUni/Trials day. Most Japanese riders treated Unicon as one or two weekend events (the traditional Japanese events) and many ignored the midweek stuff. Of course it was Japanese rider Kobayashi, a track racer, who won all the MUni races though. 
So riders have to decide if a unicycle convention contains the ingredients that work for them. Remember, competition events are only the surface layer. There is meeting the people, the whole social scene after hours, workshops, meetings, and tons of informal or non-competitive riding. That’s the real “substance” of a good unicycle convention. At NAUCC last summer in the flatness of Ohio, we even had a few non-scheduled Coker rides and Trials tours of Bowling Green. I can’t wait to ride some Swiss MUni trails with international groups of unicyclists, and not in races.
Equally many MUNI riders train hard for Unicon also. And MUNI/trials is the fastest growing segment of unicycling. To be just an add on does not reflect the growth in the sport since 1988.
And that’s exactly why we are advocating for longer MUNI events 
. I don’t know anyone in NZL who do freestyle competively. We’d like to see the MUni races catered to people who actually do ride MUNI, rather than something freestyle riders can try for the first time at UNICON. It would be like MUNI riders asking for the freestyle to be run on dirt so that we can be competitive at MUNI freestyle.
A running marathon takes just over 2hrs to complete by the top runners. A 10km “marathon” takes just over 30min to complete by the top unicyclist on a 24"/125mm cranks. It’s not about power (that’s for the sprint events), it’s about endurance 
We weren’t advocating for more events, just the existing MUNI to be lenghthned to reflect what regular MUNI riders do.
I do take Franz’s point about 24" unicycles being comparable to athletics though. I guess I was thinking more of unlimited events.
That’s sounding like we’re asking for super endurance 50km+ off-road events. We weren’t. I think a 30-45min race would be fun and much more reflective of MUNI. Most people do at least 30min when they go riding their MUNI, so it should be achievable for most MUNI riders, not just a minority. I have yet to see someone jump on their MUNI for a 10min off-road ride. You won’t get anywhere .
I’ve been in mountainbike races where several hundred riders start at the same time. MTB races tend to have a wide start before narrowing down to singletrack. The top guys and gals are always at the front before they hit the narrow bits anyway, so that kind of takes care of itself.
I agree that new countries should be encouraged to try, but why not try during the ‘convention’ part of UNICON, rather than in competition?
I’m glad they did have MUNI, and like you said, and it was good of them to hold events they weren’t interested in.
Yes, it was. And he probably would still have won if the race was 30-60min long, but we would have had 30-60min to really tough it out ;). Much more fun that way. I think he sprinted past me not far from the finish shortly before Roger Davies did.
Absolutely, I’d go to UNICON just for that. But I was referring to the competition side of things, not the convention and social aspects. So regardless of how things are run, it’s going to be a great event .
Ken
Yes, but we are specifically talking about the competition MUNI. There are also plenty of non-competitive freestyle going on at UNICON.
Yes you’re right
I guess I was thinking more of the unlimited categories
GizmoDuck,
you said exactly what I wanted to say :
A Muni competition is for people who are able to compete (like a freestyle competition is for unicyclists who are abble to compete and their number might be limited). For the other ones, lots of Muni rides will be organized.
During Mountan bike races, singletracks are not a problem, even if the participants are numerous and not so good riders. The one I’ve been to was like that.
I’m not that much a Muni rider (I only have something like 10 Muni rides a year), but it always lasts, at least, 2 hours.
And I want to thank Franz (bbraf) again for all the work, he and the other organizers, are doing.
As involved in The French Federation and the French Cup organization, I know how hard it is to satisfy everybody, and even when you know it is not possible, you want to try.
Do not take the comments in this thread as an attack, people like GizmoDuck want to explain what does interest them and why. So if you can organize it that way, they will have much more fun but if you can’t, they will have fun anyway!
John,
thanks for your detailed and, as always, very sound article!
So I change the requirements to:
[LIST=1]
I look forward to that too!
Franz
One thing that’s just popped into my head is that for people who do track racing, they can only get their buzz at competitive events. So maybe it does make sense in some way that there’s tons of track events and hardly any muni events… To be honest I don’t know any muni riders who train hard for events, all the fast muni riders I know are just accidentally fit because they ride a lot.
Although given what John F said about different countries doing different types of riding, it seems odd that there are ‘required’ events, surely a very small number of countries dominate the field in those events, particularly the track events (at a guess I’d say Japan,Switzerland, Germany would be way ahead?)
Although I guess without that requirement, any UK unicon would be a bit different from the others, at the British Unicycle Convention last year, there were no races, there was hockey (which most people entered), trials (which loads of people entered) and freestyle (which about 4 people entered). As for riding styles here, pretty much everyone who comes to BUC plays hockey, a very small number do competitive freestyle, a few more people do freestyle just for fun, loads of people do trials (and quite a few competed) and most people have a muni, but very few race them ever.
On the subject of singletrack, races I’ve ridden in have always limited it a bit, with regular fire-road / doubletrack sections put in to make passing easier. Making the judgement about passing on singletrack is always part of the fun though, sometimes you can hit a bad line to pass a slower rider, but you’re always going to risk a crash, losing you time. At the front of a race, there tends to be some strategy with singletrack, for example, if you think you can drop someone in a sprint but can’t out power them in the long term, it’s worth sprinting in front of them into the singletrack and then riding slightly below full power until the final sprint.
At the start, races often have a long wide section like you said, to let faster people get past. One thing I’ve seen a couple of times is to make this section a bit uphill, so that it’s faster to ride it, but so that slower riders will spread out a bit and not be in the way by the first singletrack. For this to work, you have to make it clear in the rules or race introduction that walking riders should get out of the way of riding riders.
Running is a difficult one. I don’t think you could make a race that couldn’t be run faster than ridden on a muni by a good runner, even if they were carrying a muni. I’ve seen fell runners running on trails mountain bikes use and they get significantly faster times than bikes over anything you couldn’t ride a coker on. I think you just have to trust people and assume most riders won’t be fell runners and will try and ride as much as possible. Rules about dismounts are going to be a bad idea, because you need to allow for people jumping off to the side and walking round obstacles that they’re not happy to ride, rather than encouraging people to ride way outside their limits, and conversely you want to encourage people to push themselves a bit, pushing yourself means UPDs, so you don’t want to penalise people for falling. Ignoring any fell runners though, I’d guess unless you’re talking super-steep or very technical uphill, most riders in contention for a placing will still be faster on a uni than running on almost any rideable terrain, and the hassle involved in getting off and remounting will overcome the temptation to run sections.
Joe
What is ‘required’ and how things have to be run is defined largely by the IUF Rulebook. The IUF Rulebook Commitee is a online community with unicyclists from all over the world who setup the rues for unicycling. The 2006 Rulebook will probably appear sometime at the beginning of 2006. This is the rulebook that we will be using for the UNICON XIII. If you want to know more, see http://www.unicycling.org/iuf/committee/rulebook/2005/. BTW, there are also british members in that commitee
The track events are dominated by the countries you mentioned. Although there are very good riders from other countries too, including the USA and Great Britain (Roger Davies 10km Unlimited, for example)!
Unicycling Hockey will be great in Switzerland! Hockey is the main interest of next to all swiss unicyclists, followed by track racing and basketball. There are people who do trials, muni and freestyle, but these are no major movements in Switzerland, yet.
This is a good hint. I include this in the requirements as well:
[LIST=1]
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Regards,
Franz
Which is exactly WHY there are “required event groups” rather than required events. To create a more rounded event unicon should include at least one event from each group . With out such a requirement a unicon could consist soley of track races, or just of freestyle events. Now it should include something, even if only one event, for every one. The groups were created to give organisers choice not complusion, if organisers can’t get insurance to run a trials comp, they dont have to, but they should run at least one event from the muni competition group ( orienteering, XC, up-hill, DH or trials).
Unicon 2006 will be the 1st to run with this requirement in the rulebook, so our swiss hosts are breaking new ground , more is expected of them by the rules than at any unicon before.
Sarah Miller
Member of IUF rule book 2006 commitee and UK rider.