I can’t say “add me” yet but you can add Scot Cooper - he did it in LA a couple of years ago.
—Nathan
Nice thread. While we’re about it, I’ll slip myself onto this list. Ironically, though I now have a 36er, and got 1200 miles into it in its first month or so*, I don’t think I’ve ever hit 100 on it in a day. Nearest would be 94 I think. But I did get ~103 miles in a day on my 29er, at the start of this summer. That was due to having the idea of visiting friends in London, from Bath, and saving on train fare. Total time around 16 hours, though it might have been more statistcally impressive without losing the A4 several times in Reading and Slough. Never bother riding through Slough. It’s called that for a reason.
No detrimental physical effects apart from a healthy leaden-ness when finally getting to sit down on the Tube (the train variety) for the last part of the journey. Airseat worked fine.
That “100 in 10 on 1” sounds like a fun thing to do. Maybe more like Hardcore Silliness to try in December, but then again…
Sam
- Yes, I do still intend to write up my End to End properly, sometime soonish!
The 100 club:
Peter Bier
David Stone
Roger Davies
Alan Chambers
Steve Colligan
Mark Wiggins
Takayuki Koike (record holder 6hrs44min)
Lars Clauson
Ken Looi
Floyd Beattie
Johnnie Severin
Cathy Fox
Scott Cooper
Bruce Dawson
Jack Hughes
Dan Heaton
Scot Cooper
Sam Wakeling
Keep adding to the list
Peter Bier
David Stone
Roger Davies
Alan Chambers
Steve Colligan
Mark Wiggins
Takayuki Koike (record holder 6hrs44min)
Lars Clauson
Ken Looi
Floyd Beattie
Johnnie Severin
Cathy Fox
Scott Cooper
Bruce Dawson
Jack Hughes
Dan Heaton
Scot Cooper
Sam Wakeling
Joe Marshall
John Himsworth
I’ve added me and John H, cos we went on a little ride today.
On Saturday, I spent 6 hours yesterday walking and unintentionally scrambling in the Peak District, then went out to a mountaineering christmas meal. After the curry we got given loads of free wine by the restaurant, because they’d taken so long to get it all cooked and served.
So at 6 o’clock this morning, I left the house, feeling somewhat hungover, a bit stiff from the walking. I rode off 3 miles to meet John, feeling rough. At 6:25ish, we started the stopwatch and the cycle computer. At 16:15ish, we stopped it at Skegness, with just over 100 miles on the cycle computer due to our very roundabout route. Then we headed off for some well deserved chips and to catch the train home.
So, 100 miles, 9 hours 51 minutes, 1 wheel (each). In December. On proper roads, not round a track. Unsupported. Without any training. With a hangover. According to the trip computer, about 9.05 riding time, so only 45 minutes of faff for the whole day. That was helped by John navigating almost entirely while riding pretty darn fast.
It was dark for an hour or two from when we started and got dark just as we finished (as you can see by the picture we took shortly after).
Pictures in http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=165567
I think the 100, 10, 1 challenge should be like this -
- 100 miles
- 10 hours elapsed time (ie. you start at a certain time, you finish 10 hours later, no taking 'riding time' off your cycle computer or anything like that.
- 1 wheel
- Actually going somewhere, not round a track.
- No support (having a number to phone for emergency support in case someone is injured or completely breaks their unicycle is okay, but once you have any contact with the support car, you've failed the challenge), definately no follow cars, food drops etc. It should be about being able to say 'I want to be 100 miles away' and use the unicycle to make that true, rather than using a car plus a unicycle to get you there.
Has anyone else completed the 100 10 1 challenge as described there yet?
Joe
ps. Winter is a fine time to try this, because you don’t get too hot and don’t need to find too many water refill places (we drank two 2L camelbaks full each, so only one refill).
Wow, VERY impressive ride. You guys must have had almost nothing in terms of rests or breaks. Any serious training prior, or just your standard riding and then a “well since there’s a thread about it let’s just go” attitude?
I would like to add myself to the century list sometime in the next 4.75 years, but I’m not sure I have a fast enough cadence to ever pull off a 100:10:1.
What was the hill profile for your route…a lot of them, or mostly flat? Also curious the crank length each of you used.
Congratulations!!!
TB
Before the ride I was assured by mr navigation that there are absolutely no hills in Lincolnshire. This wasn’t quite true, there were about 4 noticeable hills and a few undulations. But it was a very flat route in the main. I rode with 110s and John rode 125s. The one really steep little hill he made it up and I didn’t.
We didn’t do any training or anything. However, we do both do a fair bit of exercise generally. I ride about 8 miles most days on the muni at the moment and go swimming 3 days a week and do canoeing, plus extra rides most weekends, John rides coker most days and does mountain biking too, and also spent summer riding 30 miles on a bike every day, so we’re probably both starting from a quite high level of base fitness. We didn’t really have time to train or taper down our riding as I only thought about it on the 27th when John posted up on here and that Sunday was the only convenient day for a while. To be honest I figured however much training you do it’ll be hard work turning the wheel 56 thousand times whatever, so we might as well just go for it now, I think it’s mainly about mental stuff than physical fitness. If we’d thought about it too long we might have changed our minds about it being sensible. I guess part of me wanted to do it before anyone else over here did it too.
I’d never done 50 miles in 5 hours before this, so I was kind of surprised myself that we managed 50 miles in well under 5 hours, at which point I realized we actually could hit the 100 in 10, rather than just going 100 miles. We actually got there about an hour before the train we were aiming for. I think distance riding fast is much easier if there’s some other idiot to keep the pace up and to stop each other taking long breaks, otherwise it’s easy to drop back into a comfy pace and take nice long relaxing breaks. I think having a too big group wouldn’t be good though, as you’d inevitably have mechanicals or extra faff.
I’m not sure how super fast your cadence needs to be to ride this, you just need to be able to crank out a decent cruising speed forever. Our riding average was about 11mph, and the max was only something like 13 or so. I think a lot of coker riders can get those kind of riding averages, especially with short cranks. The main challenge is not taking breaks and still managing to eat lots. We took about 2 to 3 minute breaks, at first every 1 hour 20 or so, then going down to every half hour for the last 40 or 50 miles. Being okay at navigation and being able to do it on the unicycle is important here, as is being able to eat food while riding. I had energy drink in my camelbak, John has webbing on the side of his rucksack stuffed full of jelly babies and malt loaf. We reckoned we ate at least 3000 calories of food each during the ride.
The other thing about navigation is that you shouldn’t be too worried on a ride like this about getting navigation perfect, if there’s a bunch of little roads going towards somewhere, it doesn’t matter you go on any exact one, we had a few moments at the end where we just went down a random road in the right direction, we were riding a silly long route to Skegness anyway to make up the 100 miles. If you’re heading for a particular speed it’s better to keep riding than to have to stop to make navigation decisions.
To be honest though, while it’s nice to have done this particular challenge, if i wanted to do 100 miles again I’d take it slow and stop at nice pubs for lunch and lunch part two and maybe a nice tearoom for afternoon tea rather than heading for an average speed. Riding super fast is nice every so often, but you do miss out on the tea and cakes mentality of a normal ride.
Joe
I disagree. No amount of thinking would have changed my mind. It was a very silly idea from the start, and could never have been anything else.
The main thing for rides like that is definately to just keep going at a steady (ie not too fast) pace, and to take fairly frequent but quite short breaks. I don’t think we had a single break longer than 5 minutes.
I should also point out that navigating while riding should be done carefully to avoid flying off a coker at speed with a map in your hand. Also, map reading and eating cake while riding is possibly not the best idea, no matter how good the cake.
And we were both on stock cokers, except for seats, pedals and cranks.
John
I’ve sort of ridden two centuries. One was 102 miles on a Coker in 11.5 hours (in 2002), the other was a daytime ride of 90 miles in 11 hours following a night ride of 13.5 miles, both on a guni – so it was 103 miles in 24 hours (2005).
In both cases, the ride (basically the same route) was extremely hilly. I took almost no breaks for the far-less “mountainous” first half of the ride and completed about 50 miles in great time, like 4 hours. In both cases, I had false hope that I’d complete the whole deal in 9 or 10 hours, and in both cases, the hills absolutely killed me. [The ride coordinators could have made it much more doable had they started it off in the hilly section so that the end of the ride was flatter – this was one of the many problems with the ride.]
In 2002, I’d been commuting up to 100 miles a week on my Coker (mostly 60-80 miles a week). My commute changed so that by this year, I was riding only about 50 miles a week. Other than that, I did no training at all for the long rides.
Had the hills been softer, I have no doubt I could complete the ride in 10 hours, and I think I could manage 9 hours if I had a really flat ride, like in Utah, but part of the fun was seeing all the sights, passing bikers uphills, and stopping to chat with friends en route. I don’t think I could stomach a super-long ride without a friend. Maybe my bro and I should ride a century together.
Thanks for that great write-up, John and Joe!
When and where did that ride take place? Is there one this year? I’d love to attempt that on my Radial 360 36"er.
Thanks for the writeup John and Joe- welcome to the club! I’m impressed you did such an impromptu ride. Hmmm…I think I’ll go ride 100miles today so I can make that list on RSU:p
Let me just update the list (because we have Scot Cooper down twice, once because I spelt his name with an extra T)
Peter Bier
David Stone
Roger Davies
Alan Chambers
Steve Colligan
Mark Wiggins
Takayuki Koike (record holder 6hrs44min)
Lars Clauson
Ken Looi
Floyd Beattie
Johnnie Severin
Cathy Fox
Bruce Dawson
Jack Hughes
Dan Heaton
Scot Cooper
Sam Wakeling
Joe Marshall
John Himsworth
Maybe we could make up a T-shirt with everyones name on it?
I’ve done 5 unicycle centuries so far- 2x around Lake Taupo (2004, 2005), 1x 24hr off-road, and a double century during the 24hr record ride. IMHO, it’s easier to do it fast because the tiredness is a factor of time spent on the unicycle as well as effort. I’m sure I felt worse after my 8hr20min round Taupo ride in 2003 than the 7hr43min ride in 2004.
Ken
Aha, so aiming for 10 hours was where we went wrong! If only we could ride that fast. That might require training and organisation right?
Joe
Its like watching marathon runners coming in at the finish: often the people arriving after 6 hours look more wasted than those arriving after 3. Sure the slower runners are probably not as fit, but they have also been running hard for twice as long!
Saddle soreness is also a factor of time spent on the unicycle 
The faster you go, the less problems you are going to have with post race soreness.
I agree that completing a 100 mile ride is more a mental challenge rather than physical. Where fitness comes in to it is being able to complete the ride in a fast time.
I know I can crank along at a good pace for up to 4 hours but after that my fitness lets me down and it becomes a bit more of a slog. To do the 100:10:1 challenge I think I would need to either up my fitness or find a less hilly course.
Well done Joe and John for your spontinaity.
It makes me consider using the Christmas vacation, namely the Winter Solstice (Wed 21 Dec), for this nice, long, fast coker ride; the 100 - 10 - 1.
Shortest day of the year, for the longest ride of the year? This seems to make sense from a do-it-because-it-sounds-ridiculous point of view. It will be officially daytime for 7h52m, 8.12am to 16.04pm.
I’m thinking of starting from Bath at 6am, visiting somewhere like Blandford Forum and being back in time for tea. The south west isn’t the flattest of areas, but there’s just as much downhill as up.
Weee.
If anyone fancies lots of fast cokering and wants to join me, drop me a line. Joe or John… it’s not as if you don’t want to do it again within a few weeks… 
sam (at) redwelly (dot) co (dot) uk
Sam
Congratulations Joe & John on your 100 miler.
I know you’re both pretty fit guys anyway, but it still takes a lot of effort to complete the 100 miles, especially within 10 hours. Well done. Part of me would still like to complete the 100 miles in 10 hours, although I have no regrets doing our 100 miler as a more social/relaxed affair. In fact we turned our ride into a weekend meet with partying the night before and obviously after the ride.
You’ll have to let us know your route as we also did ours across Linconshire. I’m assuming the wind was kind to you. 
Hope you can both make it the Manchester this weekend for the hockey tournament.
See you soon.
Steve
Our route started in Nottingham near John’s house(*) and ended at Skegness and went on lots of little roads. It went via Cotgrave and Barkestone and New York and various other places and ended just near Butlins in Skegness. John may have more idea of which particular roads and places as he had the route marked on a map.
It wasn’t that windy, I think a small bit we had a light headwind, but nothing to really slow us down. If it was super bad, we’d have turned round at the 50 mile mark and headed back into Nottingham.
I can’t make Manchester which is super-annoying, I’m going down to London this weekend for a few things that just can’t be missed.
Sam - it sounds fantastic and you should totally go for it, but I’m busy that day going to the theatre. Darn. Actually to be honest I’m not in a hurry to repeat it now I’ve done it. I need to still be alive for the Strathpuffer.
Incidentally, the whole disorganised riding thing is great. I reckon we do way more rides than a lot of people simply due to not organising loads in advance and just heading out riding when possible. Oh and owning lots of maps to go places without having to buy maps helps. And using public transport so you don’t have to faff around organising shuttles or always riding circular routes.
Joe
(*) I did an extra few miles to get to the start, humph.
But I rode home from the station when we got back, which makes me more hardcore than you. Ha!
Sam - sounds like you’ve got the attitude for ‘planning’ about right, and after the end to end 100 miles can’t be too hard, surely?
Our route was a random mix of small roads, chosen for a mix of directness and avoiding big roads - didn’t fancy riding down the A1 (that probably counts as an interstatemegahighway or something in the US). A more full description can be provided on request, but it’ll be a massive list of tiny little villages and descriptions of cabbage fields.
Can’t make it to Manchester either, I’m off biking in the peaks with the uni club (ahh, the irony). Never been there on two wheels, should be fun.
July 15, 2006 I completed 102 miles Seattle to Centraila during the first day of the STP.
Way to go Joe…you do all Washington riders proud, and join a pretty exclusive club that have done the STP on one wheel. As far as I know, it’s just you, Bruce Dawson, Jack Hughes, and Dan Heaton, in reverse order of completion.
Plus joining that bigger but still exclusive list of century riders is nothing to sneeze at.
Congrats! If you’re willing to drive a couple hours to the Seattle area for an all day unicycle cook-out in late September, PM me your e-mail address.
Tom B
Are you talking the Nimbus gel or is there another one I have overlooked there at UDC? Which mount does it use?
I will be going for it next summer on my trip to Florida.
And people, I can not believe you are forgetting Gracie!!
add Gracie Sorbello, in my readings of her blog she mentions that her longest day was 105 miles.
Peter Bier
David Stone
Roger Davies
Alan Chambers
Steve Colligan
Mark Wiggins
Takayuki Koike (record holder 6hrs44min)
Lars Clauson
Ken Looi
Floyd Beattie
Johnnie Severin
Cathy Fox
Bruce Dawson
Jack Hughes
Dan Heaton
Scot Cooper
Sam Wakeling
Joe Marshall
John Himsworth
Gracie Sorbello
A little archaeology needed to dig up this thread.
Thanks to having a free Saturday before the clocks go back, with the prospect of reasonable weather, I had a go at Joe’s 100-10-1 challenge:
Popped the (strangely long-feeling) 114s on 36" Shaddowfax, tightened the repaired broomstick handles, and managed to faff before leaving by 10am. The Radio4 ‘pips’ ringing in my ears, I set off at a brisk pootle down to Builth Wells. According to Google Maps it should be 48 miles away.
A lovely October day, with low sunlight glancing off the wet road and golden leaves here and there. The rain came and went a few times, and there was a reasonably stiff headwind. Never mind, it was fun.
The hills and wind were getting increasingly tiresome on the way back - the resolve to never ever stop on the way up a hill is very important. Had a little stop at a very rural garage, where the mechanical petrol pump has a handwritten sticker saying ‘sorry, no cards’, and the packets of peanuts jostled with old potted plants.
The last 20 miles is mostly downhill, which was nice, and with a headwind (now turned around to face me again) I didn’t need much brake use.
Once almost back to Aberystwyth, I had to make up a few more miles, by going up and down a half mile section a few times. Slightly against the spirit of the challenge, but when you’ve done 97 miles in under nine hours, a few ideological corners must be cut. Still, I finished within close range of my house, with pizza and sausages and soft sofa seats.
100 miles eventually clocked in after 9 hours and 1 minute. Faffing/resting time of 54 minutes. Average speed of 12.3 mph - it was never much above that, and felt like more of a slog than a spinning cruise. Max was never usually more than 17, even down hill, and flat was more like 13.
Next time (erm…) I’ll find somewhere flatter. Worth doing though
Sam