The Wound
Hope you have a total recovery, my last accident (non-uni) has me considering selling off some of the faster of the herd. 29er schlumpf, 36’’ and the like.
Thanks guys!
Counting the days. It started before xmas so I think mid next week I should be able to ride. No pain left for the past week, but I don’t want to take a chance!
I hadn’t really expected this thread to take off, being an idea from a motorcycle forum. So here is my rant:
My wife had been complaining that I’ve gotten fat since she moved to NL from Thailand and thought it was time I started jogging, which I did 4 times last week. Unicycling sure makes me sweaty at each trip but, now that I have the technique right, it takes longer to start burning fat, I reckon. Beside that she has never been too supportive in my hobby, so I generally only ride on Saturdays. As I hadn’t run in at least a year, I got quite a lot of muscle ache this week. Never the less, I love unicycling, so I rode the 32" for 10km this morning and right after took the 29" muni off-roading. Now my legs are killing me again.
Not sure what has happened, but lately I’ve had more problems free-mounting. It just stand and look at my pedal and kinda build up focus to get on. I’ve been riding the 32" with 140mm and today it took about 5 times to mount, though the 29" was instant. When I look at those youtube vidz of peeps just getting on without thought, I get jealous and tell myself, I should prolly focus on just mounting again.
Fingers crossed for you.
Norway is one of the best countries in the world to UPD in with it’s free medical service and caring people. Even if it didn’t quite work out, I’m happy that you took my advice, because people rarely do. 
Seat height
I raised the seat height on my 24" for the third time-- close to a 1/2 inch today. Every time I raise the height, the less effort it takes me to ride.
I suspect that if I keep raising the seat at some point it will take zero effort to ride…
Chief
Nothing, because I’m too scared to ride my unis.
It’s -35C right now and it only warmed up to -25C today and with my luck they would shatter beneath me.
Anyways, I’ve been too busy under my house (crawlspace) trying to solve some water issues.
Great time for that though… I think I’ve narrowed it down to the jet pump.
or your seat ends up floating above them uni 
and you will have to start thinking about getting a Giraffe
I have never cycled when it is that cold. I can imagine it would be interesting. I’m not gonna hold it against you for avoiding it.
You peeps should come here this time of year. The smoke from the fires are only noticeable 1-2 days a week and I think it’s improving. Promise.
Well fires aside (and that is not intended to diminish the situation at all, clearly it is truly awful what is happening in your country), just the raw heat (from the sun) is enough that I am not sure how you unicycle there at this time of the year.
I sweat almost every day that I come into the office and that is even with negative (°C) temperatures. I think I would melt in the temps I have seen reported from your neck of the woods.
Sounds like you don’t have the right technique yet. Sweating only happens to beginners. J/k
Do you have showers at work? We don’t so I hardly ever ride to work by uni.
For me riding at around 5ºC is about the right temperature. Then my hands don’t freeze off and I won’t sweat too much after a run. Last year with the uni championships in May it was 20+ degrees. That was just too warm to set a good time.
I freely admit I am a pretty basic rider. I can ride, I can reliably mount and umm… that is about it.
I get much hotter on the 26er (that I use for winter due to better tyre options for ice or snow) than the 36er. I guess I get hotter because I have to try harder and do more revs on the 26er, to get a ‘reasonable’ speed.
To give you some idea of my speed, I did actually time myself today, from my kid’s “barnehagen” (kindergarden/nusery) to work. It was 5km to my workplace and took 20m, with two places where I needed to wait for lights. That gives me an average speed (inclusive of those waiting times) of 15km/h (9.3mph). For further perspective there is an initial 45m climb but after that it is pretty much downhill (167m↓ over the course of the rest/majority of the route). I am getting the distance and ascent/descent by carefully plotting my chosen course on Google maps as a pedestrian, so it might be a little off but it looks/feels about right.
It was warm today (well ‘warm’ from a Norwegian winter perspective). I think somewhere around 4 or 5℃ this morning and I wore a t-shirt and windproof jacket and a backpack with a laptop and a few other things in it.
So yeah, this is enough to get pretty sweaty.
Sadly no, not at my current job. When I get to the office I go to the bathroom and take off my t-shirt and try and cool and wipe myself down as best I can (water on the face and head really helps heat wise). After that I switch t-shirts with an extra, clean one I carry in my backpack.
So far nobody has complained about me, so I assume I am ok and don’t totally reek, given I do something like this journey every day.
On the way home I sometimes push a little more because (obviously) I have a shower at home, so it really does not matter how hot or sweaty I get, but the commute from work to home over my most common route includes 102m ascent over 5.7km (again using Google to plot so it might be off). Normally (assuming no real snow or ice) this takes around 24-25 mins but there are quite a few places I have to cross including some traffic lights, so my average speed (including waits) is hovering around the 14km/h.
Now if I really push it to close to my ability and I am super lucky with crossings (no waiting), I have managed to do this route in 21mins on the 26er or put another way, an average of 16.3 km/h (10.1 mph), but is not consistently maintainable. I am rarely that lucky with crossings and pushing myself hard every day is not fun.
You ride faster than me. Definitely to work I ride as relaxing as I can, not to sweat to much and on the way home I take a different and longer route over a dyke where only bikes are allowed. On the days I decide to ride to work, I make sure the laptop is already in the office, in case I would make a fall and smash it.
Do you ride faster uphill or faster downhill? I know it depends on how steep it is. I always have some problems going downhill, fearing my uni will ride away from me.
Let’s put it this way, any hill I can get up, I will certainly ride faster down.
That said I know what you mean, there have been a couple of times when I felt I let my speed get out of control and started to get some hint of panic. In the old days I would have fallen off long before I got too fast, now I can let things get to far. This is the main reason I should probably get a brake, which something I have avoided until now. But I am pretty stupid, so I will probably have a terrible crash before I come to my senses and add a brake.
I actually quite like going uphill because it puts me on a par with many cyclists and I suppose I am a little competitive.
The nice thing with uphill is that bicyclists shift down to a gearing that is closer to my own and they loose the ability to coast. In the right conditions (where gearing matches nicely with the gradient) I might even have an advantage because of the lower weight of a unicycle compared with all but the best bikes. Thus this is almost the only time when I have a chance to overtake (and regularly do on one particular hill). On flats I might keep up with (or even occasionally overtake) someone who is really cruising along and in no rush. Obviously on downhill I have no chance whatsoever!
So what’s happening today? Well I did exactly the exact same route but this time with the 36" (since there is no snow and ice, and UniMyra told me to start using my 36" again).
And? … 19 minutes. So I save a minute (Yeah!) but then I also had much more luck with the lights… so… umm… basically the same speed.
I guess my take away from this this is a speed that feels right to me and I gravitate towards to.
To be fair it felt much more relaxed and required less effort and I was nothing like as hot on arrival.
so all my new pads and gloves arrived, been riding the 24 at work some during lunch. mostly just practicing stalls and still stands I guess is what it would be called, and hopping. I had a good day of hopping the other day but yesterday was only so-so. But I did at the end get to where I was able to slow down and come to a stop then stand up and start hopping. what I was doing before was stand up as I’m almost ready to stop then start hopping. I think it’s easier to do it full weight in seat as I stop then stand up and hop. it seams to be less strain on the legs anyway. Looking forward to getting on the 32 again, hopefully get a ride in this weekend
Yes, I ordered the Code 36"! You’re god damn right I did!
Got to air my own 36’er yesterday after a week with the flu.
My latest ride
Friday night, Lane Cove National Park down the back of North Epping. 3 water crossings encountered and btw, I’m fairly new to muni.
looking good there
so I decided I’m going to change the 127 cranks on the 32 to 140 and ride with them for a while, I’m just too close to out of control on the 127’s and don’t feel I can excel until I get more control of it. I found a couple new places to ride that have decent inclines I can ride. one of them is probably a mile or longer of constant incline before it levels back out. this will be good practice for me to use in my training for the century ride this year. I know I can’t do the 100 miles but I really want to be ready to do the 37 mile section. I wanted to try it last year but I just wasn’t ready. this year I have 7 months to train and get ready