Unicycling for a Cure: 100 Mile Ride for Cancer Research

General
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Hey!

I just started to train for a 100 mile ride in Connecticut! I’m doing this ride to raise money for cancer research through Relay for Life.

The actual Relay for Life event is on June 11-12th, but I will be doing the ride late April or early May. At the start of my training (a 10 mile ride), I feel like I’m off to a good start :). Did the 10 miles on a moderately hilly road in an hour! My goal is to keep doing 10 miles every 50-55 mins and then break for 5-10 mins. I think this will not only keep good time, but give me good breaks!

I started a little blog about this ride. I’ll be adding posts about training updates and other things. The blog is here (http://unicyclingforacure.blogspot.com). Check it out!

So far, I’ve raised $80 for the ride and my goal is $500. I think that’s pretty attainable! :slight_smile:

SO, if you are feeling generous, feel free to go to the blog, press the PayPal donate button and donate a few dollars!

Also, is anyone interested in doing the ride with me? I’m not sure about specifics yet, but will keep this thread updated with new stuff. If you’re interested in riding with me (remember, this is in CT), let me know!!!

Thanks!

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I’d be interested in joining you. I was already contemplating a 100 mile ride. I haven’t done over 15 mi before but I’m used to hills and have some long distance bike experience. I think I’m currently close to the level you described so if I follow your training patterns it should go well. :slight_smile:

I live about 55 miles from New Haven, so I could even show up for one or two of the longer training rides.

Do you have a preliminary route? I’m just curious about common grades and road conditions to make sure I properly prepare.

Tysen

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That sounds great! I haven’t done a ride longer than 15 miles either, haha. so we’re probably at the same level I’m guessing (except I don’t have the long distance bike experience haha).

Where abouts do you live 55 miles from New Haven? I’m about the same distance (south of Middletown).

As for the route, I am not sure what will be done… we can figure that out though. Something flat. :slight_smile:

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Nice to see quite a few in training for long rides. I’m doing one in the UK this year 160 over 7 days. I can go about 30 miles on a bike quite comfortably, but struggle at 15 miles on my unicycle (is a 29er though). Trying to get to about 20 tomorrow!!

Want to do a 100 miler before my ride just so I can put myself in the elite group!

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Yaaa, it’s great to see so many people starting to do long distance rides :slight_smile:

I’ll be doing a 25 miler on Saturday, which should be pretty good.

@Wired that 160 mile ride over 70 days should be great! how many miles a day is that? about 20? are you doing it in a group or by yourself? you should consider getting a 36-er. so much faster :roll_eyes:

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I kicked in a little through PayPal. I just did a fundraiser with my school through the St. Baldricks organization. 5 of us teachers, 14 students, and one cop had our heads shaved to raise money for childhood cancer research. I raised a little over $500. Together we raised over $5000. That was pretty good considering we only had 1 week to do this. It was fun.

We lost a student last year to cancer. I’m real big on these fundraisers for cancer research. I hope you meet your goal. I wish I could give more. I’m on the wrong coast or I’d train to ride with you. It’s a cool thing you’re doing.

Here is me on that day. My hair is a couple of mm long now. (My husband wasn’t too excited about it. He didn’t know about it for a week. It was in the paper and one of his employees spilled the beans:D).

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I live in Hartsdale, New York so basically 55 miles West of New Haven. I mentioned it because I saw the Elm City Unicycle Club listed on your profile.

Yeah!

Hmmm, sounds good. I’ll do a 25 mile ride on Friday, so I have a day to recover for my unicycle club’s meeting on Sunday. The cofounder, David Stone, has done a hundred mile ride, so if he’s there I’ll see if he is interested.

Maybe I can hook up my bike computer to get some ride data. Most of my riding involves hills and traffic so I don’t have a great idea of my general cruising speed.

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Oh, awesome! So you’re in the New York Unicycle Club :slight_smile: very cool!

It’s also a possibility that I could take a train from New Haven to New York, and do the ride over there. Just an idea.

Sounds good!!! I’ll probably do another 15 mile ride today (did one yesterday) in addition to the 25 mile ride. Map your route on Google Maps, set it “bicycling” so it doesn’t give you main roads, and see how long it says it’ll take on a bike. Time yourself and see how you compared to a biker :slight_smile:

It said it’d take 1 hour and 30 mins on a bike for my 15 mile ride. I did it in an hour and 20 mins. Not sure if I truly beat the time a bike could do it haha.

Good luck on your 25 mile ride today!!!

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Thanks for donating the $15! I emailed you a little thank you thing lol. After you shaved your heads, did you donate your hair? Is that how it worked? And $500 in a week?! Impressive!!!

Sorry to hear about the student :confused: Cancer can really make such an impact on people’s lives…

good to hear your hair is growing back again :slight_smile: too bad your husband found out though haha.

thanks for the donation again!!!

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The 25 mile ride went pretty smoothly, though it was a bit more draining than I expected.

I didn’t have a good route to pick since I didn’t know how my body would react to the increased milage and if I would feel safe on denser streets, but I also didn’t want to ride on the streets that I usually ride on. I ended up, somewhat reluctantly, riding a 3 mile loop around a college campus where a lot of bikers meet for rides; pretty big shoulders on the more trafficked section of the loop.

So I was set for just focusing on the distance.

Right off the bat fell off and scraped myself a teensy bit . The first couple miles didn’t feel so great either, I think I was a bit tensed about riding over double what I’d ridden before. Things got better quickly though. First 10-12 miles were what I expected. At about 15 my crotch started getting a bit sore. I’m riding without handlebars. I have the Nimbus T7 bars but I don’t much like them for my usual riding. They are also, as has been noted, a tad too high for proper support. I’m considering going with a KH Fusion saddle and bars, if I really go through with this. :stuck_out_tongue: I also was surprised to find the balls of my feet a getting numb. This might be because I tightened my shoe laces as I don’t like loose shoes while riding.

I did six laps for 18 miles before taking a break. Two UPD in that time.
Stopped at the car for my banana and to refill my water bottle. 15 minutes for the break: did some stretches.

Got back on to the nice realization that my crotch and feet were refreshed. Learning how to manage all of this is something I’ll have to cut my distance uni teeth on.

I rode two laps in the opposite direction… soon realizing that this was the tougher direction. Obviously the elevation change was the same but there was one steep hill on which my tiring legs were burning too close to the end of the wick.

Now at 24 miles I was toying with the idea of doing a full “victory lap” for a total of 27, but I didn’t feel that I needed to punish myself on the hill again as it would reach that point where it becomes unpleasant enough that I will only continue if I have to meet a goal. I took a cross road for a final total of 26.3 miles.

I know the .3 because I did fit my cyclometer!
So here are my stats:

Distance: 26.3 miles
Riding time: 2h15min (2h30m with break)
Average Speed: 11.6 mph
Top speed: 15.7 mph (this time without brake;))
[Never ridden with a brake.]

Interested to hear how you fare. If you do end up doing consecutive 15-15-25 days I might need to do some thinking, err or riding!

Good luck on your 25 mile ride tomorrow!

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This is the elevation profile for my loop.
The grades are averaged for each section so even though the tough hill only registers as 4% here there were two parts that were in the high teens but they were too short to show up at this resolution.

Picture 2.jpg
Picture 2.jpg800×102 11.5 KB

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Good job on your ride! Sounds like a good challenge you had :slight_smile:

That sucks you fell right at the start… good thing you kept going haha

you went pretty fast on that, averaging the 11.6 mph.

As for my 25 mile ride I attempted today, I made it about 16 miles… the route I had planned had me going through the Pratt and Whitney property (which I didn’t know) and they wouldn’t let me go through that obviously…

So I had to rethink the map I was looking at and come up with a new route right on the spot. Unfortunately, the new route was uphill most of the way… I did ride the whole way up most of the big hills - slowly.

In the end, I ended up doing 15.66 miles in an hour and 45 minutes. That comes out to being around 8.95 mph. It was a good ride, hard, but worth it :slight_smile:

there was a 4 mile stretch which was up a steep and curvy road… the elevation gain in that stretch was about 600 feet. Also, unknown to me, most of the backroads I went on were not pavement; they were gravel.

Lesson learned: plan my routes better hahah

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Talked to David but his knee has been bothering him since his last attempt, and he wears a brace sometimes while riding.

I’m feeling pretty much fully recovered from my last distance ride, and am ready to consider planning another but I don’t know what the standard method of going from 25 miles to 100 in about a month’s time would be. I’ll ask in the Training for 100 mile ride thread and see what they say.

Nice job handling that. While I actually find riding unpaved roads quite fun, gravel does allow a fair bit of swaying on a 36er. I was wondering if I should consider acclimating to 114mm cranks, but the chances of encountering such obstacles when fatigued makes me wonder if that is wise. I’ll ask about that too.