Future of Unicycle Road Racing (here's what I think; what do you think?)

Hey, the redlinewaterboy, methinks that's quite a perfect comparison you
have there with the trials rider on clipless pedals! I think that should
just inspire others to further improve beyond what the original clipless
rider could accomplish with his gear.

Also, @Ken, I totally agree with you on the relativity of silliness (I
love that word, btw... relativity ) That's justification for what I
wan't to think but couldn't figure out why. If unicycling is silly, why
even a bicycle?

Also, yeah, @Klaas Bil, I think... you're pretty much on the dot; my
maximum hour distance might be 31 or 32 at the tops right now, and the
highest I could see myself as a rider realistically getting would maybe
be 36 or so, but only with a higher gear ratio than 1.5 and ONLY with a
ton of training. (I doubt I could get that fast in only a year or two.)
I bet a really accomplished cyclist on an appropriate rig could get over
42km, though. I say your prediction of a 40km hour record by 2018 is a
good one.


--
chuckaeronut

Uni to work to eat to live to uni to work to...!
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Wery interesting post.

Remember that the road and track bicycles is not fastest buildt. The
bicycles must have sitting positions inside regulations. We Unicyclist
is sitting over the crank and have better sitting position to go fast
with more power.


--
unijuul

www.unijuul.com
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I'd be surprised if we could get more power to go into our unicycles
than riders of upright bikes, but then again, IMO, it's really worth no
more than a chuckle or two to compare, I think. Mesay get as close as
you can, enjoy, and kick some butt in the process if you feel like it



--
chuckaeronut

Uni to work to eat to live to uni to work to...!
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Can't wait till a somewhat serious cyclist tries unicycling. Somebody
who can spin and can put power into their stroke. Somebody should send
Lance a unicycle. Since he's retired he should have some time to learn
to ride.


--
Conrad.Nguyen
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I want to applaud Chuck for being humble and saying it like it is. He
isn't that great, and a pro biker would destroy our times if he trained
on a guni for a few years. It is nice to see you were not blinded by
your 15 minutes.

As a spectator (steady but slow 36 er ), I would like to ask for
simplicity. I have been following motorcycle racing for years. They
have way to many classes ! I have no idea if the guy who is formula
extreme champ is faster then world superbike, or even what the
difference between the bikes is. It is crazy boring for the
spectators.

Because it is such a fringe sport, our only hope of grabbing viewer
attention is to give them what they want, and not design the rule book
to assuage the ego's of the riders. I can tell you what the viewers
want. They want to see a 5 minute highlight tape that ends in crowning
the undisputed uni racing champ of the world. They will watch that.
Make it more complex then that, and they will not understand what they
are watching, and thus will not care !


--
feel the light
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feel the light wrote:
He isn't that great, and a pro biker would destroy our times if he
trained on a guni for a few years. It is nice to see you were not
blinded by your 15 minutes.





I disagree...for the moment anyway.

Unicycling has been traditionally undergeared compared with bikes. You
are pedalling very fast at very low resistance. Going fast has been
about how fast you can pedal without falling off. We are still a way
off getting an equivalent gear to many bikes. As Chuck mentioned,
probably a 1:2 or even 1:2.5 gear might be closer.

Fit bikers do not necessarily make for very fast unicyclists at all, at
least not with the current gearing. I've seen 9yr old kids cruise at
23km/hr on a 24" limited unicycle, and conversely, some very fit adults
who would not be able to get anywhere near that speed on a Coker. That
will probably change as gear ratios become bigger.

With regards to the debate about geared and ungeared...one of the
reasons I took up unicycling is for it's simplicity. A wheel and
cranks directly connected to the axle. It is still my favourite
unicycle...I do not ride geared except for racing. I do all my
unitouring on an Unguni. I like it for the same reasons that many
mountainbikers have ditched their multiple gears and gone singlespeed.


I think it's a fundamental change in unicycling....much more so than
say going from an Eddy Merkx style traditional bike to an Obree style
bike in bicycling hour records...that has more to do with a change in
body position, not how the wheel is actually driven.

You could argue that someone could make a 46" Unicycle that only tall
people could ride. Should we have a disctinction between multiple
wheel sizes? How do you compare a 36" with a 46"? Well, the
simplicity test is still whether or not it is driven by gears or by a
direct drive. So no, I don't think different wheel sizes should matter
within Unlimited, Unguni racing.

In my opinion, I think it is best to classify records as limited
(24"/125mm), then Unguni (of any wheel size/crank lengh) and Guni (of
any gear size and wheel size/crank lenght).

Are there too many classes and will it confuse people? Possibly, but
we have many more age group categories than three! It would probably
still mean that GUnis are racing against Ungunis. But at least there
is an option for people to compete within their own subclass in a race.
And that their results should count for something more than overall
placing.

For instance...if you came 7th overall in a unicycle race, but was the
first female. It might have been more fun to place 1/2/3rd, but you're
still recognised as first overall in your category.


--
GizmoDuck

The Uninam Tour 2008.....Hanoi to Saigon!!! www.uninam.net

The SINZ Unicycle Tour 2007....South Island, New Zealand
www.sinzuni.org

The Induni Unicycle Tour 2009. Unicycle Tour of India. Email me for
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Chuck- very well said. Every sport has some kind of growing pains
when new technology makes it easier to perform at a higher level.
For example both crampons and camming devices were hotly contested as
"cheating" in climbing in the early 1900's and 1970's, and look at
mixed/ice climbing and hard trad climbing today, where these debates
still go on (like criticizers of heel spurs on crampons).

It is very important to note that we are having this discussion at the
same time as we can hardly imagine what other kinds of improvements may
be made to our equipment in the next few years. This is only the
start.

At the same time, Ken has a good point. A lot of us, myself included,
got into this sport due to its simplicity. Luckily, we do this for
fun, even serious racing, and thus we get to make the rules as to how
to define our own fun in terms of the equipment we personally ride.
It does make sense to level the playing field in terms of competition
and having a singlespeed class now seems necessary. I think that will
most likely be on the table at the next IUF rulebook committee
meetings.

In terms of silliness, every sport done for the sake of it is "silly".
There is no sport where you can create a rational argument as to its
inherent usefulness, beyond secondary effects - e.g. fitness, personal
self-worth, income if you work at it, etc. What makes a sport "serious"
in a popular sense is societal acceptance- how well it has been
normalized in the eyes of the public.

If we care about societal acceptance, we also need to put unicycling in
the correct context. For example, the difference in "fringe-ness"
between unicycling and freeride mountain biking is much less than, say
freeride mountain biking and soccer. Yet freeride mountain bikers can
take themselves pretty seriously sometimes, as in any sport where
athletes live in a bubble surrounded by like-minded people.

So- I think this debate is really healthy because we are all currently
shaping the culture of our sport in ways that will have huge effects in
the years to come. Thanks Chuck!

Kris


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danger_uni
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I agree with most of the statements being made here. Chuck is quite
modest for all of his achievements in the past few months.

Geared unicycles, for those that have tried them, have really changed
the way that we think about riding. I am not a fan of spinning
ridiculously fast, and however fun I found riding a 36er ungeared, I
have a lot more fun on a geared set up with a slower cadence. I think
that geared hubs will make a lot more people get interested in pushing
road unicycling to the extreme. Already there has been talk of racing
across America and other extreme endurance events that are now somewhat
within sight now that we have seen what geared 29s and geared 36s can
do.

We have been talking about all of the advances in the sport, and how at
this rate, we will have even more upgrades to our equipment. Maybe we
should discuss what will allow us to push the sport/speed even more.
Now that Kris has jumped aboard and released a KH36, and worked with
Florian on a geared hub, hopefully more quality distance equipment will
be in the works.

Right now it seems that the most important equipment upgrades we could
use are lighter 36er wheelsets. Lighter rims, lighter tubes, and
lighter tires.


--
siafirede

'DCuni' (http://www.dcuni.com/blog) - my blog about Unicycling in
Washington DC, Virginia, Maryland
*James* = my name | 'Myspace' (http://www.myspace.com/clawsout)
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siafirede wrote:

Right now it seems that the most important equipment upgrades we could
use are lighter 36er wheelsets. Lighter rims, lighter tubes, and
lighter tires.



I think this is the wrong approach; what we should be concerned with is
getting practical systems with higher gear ratios. Then we can use
commodity parts (700c) for the rest of the unicycle, and choose from
hundreds of available lightweight bike parts. The only reason geared
36ers are faster than geared 29ers is the higher gear ratio; if you
could choose any gear ratio, there'd be no reason to cart around the
extra weight and size of a 36" wheel.


--
tholub
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tholub wrote:
I think this is the wrong approach; what we should be concerned with is
getting practical systems with higher gear ratios. Then we can use
commodity parts (700c) for the rest of the unicycle, and choose from
hundreds of available lightweight bike parts. The only reason geared
36ers are faster than geared 29ers is the higher gear ratio; if you
could choose any gear ratio, there'd be no reason to cart around the
extra weight and size of a 36" wheel.



I agree that existing high-end bicycle parts have tremendous appeal but
I think that the massive 36" wheel adds stability to a geared unicycle.
Smaller, lighter wheels mean a twitchy ride. Again, this could be a
rider specific phenomenon. Each rider must find the optimum trade off
between putting energy into moving a heavy wheel or putting energy into
maintaining balance in an unstable system with a fast response.


--
harper

-Greg Harper

*jc is the only main man. there can be no other.*

"Natural logs are what you ride on a Mun'e'." - kevinalexandersmith
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