It must be hard if you’re using the rolling or forward hop technique to time your jump and not let any part of the wheel cross the line mustn’t it? I’ve never been very good at timing my rolling hops. Am I right in thinking that everyone starts at the line for a rolling hop and pedals back to when they want to start their run up so that the pedals are in the right position? It’s going to take a lot of practice to get my rolling hop better than my side hop. That’s all right though.
From what you’ve been saying, Unicon certainly seems to be a much higher standard than UniNats. This can of course be expected and it’s good news for me!
It might be interesting to add a new jumping competition for jumping up on to a platform. Could choose to allow or disallow pedal grabs. This would give three jumping competitions: long jump, high jump and platform jump.
>it works the same way as an Olympic high jump. That’s why we
>call it the high jump.
't Would be logical then to call it just that: the Olympic high jump.
Maybe one day we can
>…Long Jump…
>The best unicycle for this event needs to combine three relatively
>incompatible features. You want speed, which means a large wheel and/or
>short cranks. You want a good jump, which means some bounce in the
>tire, which suggests a high air volume tire. And you want the cycle to
>be as light as possible, to keep it in the air.
I’m not a jumper by any standards so I may be totally wrong here, but
I thought of a fourth feature: height. Would it be conceivable that a
light and moderately low giraffe might be beneficial? I can imagine
that after suitable practice one would be able during the ballistic
phase of the jump to swing the giraffe forward with respect to the
combined centre of gravity. Then if the initial speed was sufficiently
high, the forward momentum could be used to get upright again and ride
out of the move. What do you think?
Klaas Bil
William K Kellogg invented cornflakes to be a nutritious breakfast cereal for people suffering from mental illnesses. The company he set up to produce them was originally called The Battle Creek Toasted Cornflake Company.
Today I improved my personal best quite a bit. I’m stil using the sidehop technique. I tried the rolling hop technique a bit but really struggled…I’ll make sure I practice it some more.
My new sidehop PB is 1.35m. Before today my PB was 1.2m so I’m really happy. I was using my new Oddysey Twisted Pro pedals that I bought today and my new frame. I’m thinking that if my new muni is too big and heavy for long jump, I’ll just add a 2.25" wide tyre to my current 20" and use that. We’ll see. I hope I’ll prefer to use my new unicycle.
That’s an interesting question. I guess it boils down to whether the extra weight of the giraffe can be overcome by the advantage of the longer frame.
But for competition, I’d have to check back with the rules as written. I’m not sure if giraffes are allowed. They are allowed in dirt MUni though. So far we have no restrictions at all for those events. For high and long jump, I don’t see that we need such restrictions either. I just don’t remember if we had it specified for UNICON 11.
For those who are curious, we had three types of racing unicycle classification. For track, 24" max. wheel with 125mm min. crank. For some other events (I think including high and long jump but not sure), unlimited standard unicycles are allowed. This means any size wheel or crank, but still pedaling directly on the wheel axle. For the unlimited marathon, dirt MUni, and some other events, we had “total” unlimited, which means anything you want, as long as it’s on one wheel, and human powered.
A platform jump even would be interesting. It would be easier to judge than high and long jump, but perhaps harder to build the platform. If pedal grabs are allowed, you would have to come up with a material strong enough to hold up to constant grabs, but presumably having some texture, not just a piece of steel. Also, making an adjustable platform that’s strong and stable would be a challenge for the builder.
