City Creek Challenge Race Report

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything here. The truth is that I
have a 'new mountain bike' (http://www.castellanodesigns.com) and have
been riding it exclusively for the last two or three months. I haven’t
done anything with unicycles (riding or building) so I haven’t had
anything to say about them until today.

There are now 5 people (including me) that I know of around here that
ride MUni. One of them is a young guy named Kyle. He called me Friday
to tell me that he was going to ride in a local mountain bike race – The
City Creek Challenge – and wanted to know if I was interested in racing
my MUni too. I explained to him that I haven’t been riding MUni and
didn’t think I’d do it. If I raced at all it would be on my mountain
bike.

This morning I woke up (Saturday … race day) to perfect riding
conditions – cooler than it’s been and a perfect cloudless sky – so I
decided to do the race on my mountain bike. After all, the start line
was only about 3 miles from my house and it seemed like waste not to.
As I was messing around getting ready I kept thinking about Kyle racing
on his MUni. Then I read a little article in the morning paper about
the upcoming race. The promoter was quoted as saying “There’s even a
couple of people racing on unicycles this year”. I told my wife that I
felt kind of like a sell-out racing on my mountain bike to which she
replied “so ride your unicycle dummy!”

I decided to take BOTH the mountain bike and MUni, then decide which one
to ride after I got a feel of the “vibe” at the registration/start area.
As soon as I arrived I saw Kyle riding around the parking lot warming
up and I KNEW I would ride the MUni! I’m sure I’m the first one to ride
MUni on the City Creek Trail so I couldn’t let someone else be the first
to race MUni on it.

The City Creek trail system is a vast network that I’m extremely
familiar with … I’ve ridden it either on my mountain bike or MUni
literally hundreds of times. The trails are perfect for X country MUni.
The race course was more or less a figure 8 with each loop about six
miles for a total of 12 miles. Beginner mountain bikers would do one
figure 8, sport riders would do the figure 8, then half of it again and
expert riders would do two figure 8’s. There’s about 900 feet of
climbing on the first part of the figure 8 and 600 feet on the second
part. Kyle was intent on doing the full 12 mile loop but I decided I’d
do the first half of the figure 8, then bail. That would be 6 miles and
900 feet of climbing which seemed like plenty of riding for me today.

The race started in the parking lot, crossed a paved road, went up a
gravel road a couple hundred feet then onto sweet single track. The
first mile or so is pretty steep and rocky but ridable. Usually I just
“go till you blow” then stop and let my heart rate drop to a non-fatal
rate then “go till you blow” again. I usually “blow” twice in this
first mile. Today however, my strategy was to “go until I felt like I
was fixin’ to blow” then jump off and walk to recover. I reasoned that
I would actually cover ground faster that way. I walked quite a bit
today and was passed my *many* bikers. The next part of the trail is
less steep but still pretty rocky. That lasts for about a mile until
the single track dumps out onto a double track that’s nice and smooth
but still uphill. I found a rhythm on this double track and chugged
along pretty well, with my pedal strokes in time with a song that was
playing in my head – “Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots. Eventually,
another single track takes off from the double track and that’s where
the downhill begins. It’s a great trail with big sweeping corners and a
couple technical, rocky bits thrown in. It’s on this downhill that the
slowest biker finally passed me leaving me in dead last position. There
was a water station at the intersecting point of the figure 8 and that’s
where I decided to call it a day and head for the finish line. From
that point the trail is all downhill and really nice. It crosses City
Creek several times, is very twisty and just generally a blast to ride.
I waited at the intersection for the “expert/pro” mountain bikers to go
by (they were getting to the intersection for the second time) so they
wouldn’t be coming up behind me on the trail. On my way down, a few of
the faster “sport” riders caught me but I could always hear them coming
and get off the trail before I got ironed by them.

Turns out that Kyle is an animal. He’s been riding with clipless pedals
lately (!!!) and just tore it up. He rode the entire 12 miles and beat
several bikers. Because I took the short loop, I was at the finish line
when he crossed and let me tell you, he was moving … just spinning like
crazy on the downhill finish!

It was a lot of fun but as I expected, I’m not in very good MUni shape
even though I’ve been doing a fair amount of mountain biking. Even so,
I won my division! That would be “Beginner Unicycle Age 40+”.

SH


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HE LIVES!

i thought you might have dround in that apple fritter machine or
what-ever you wrote about in an email last year.

nice write up. make sure and have a camera ready when you ride with that
guy again. using SPD's on a uni results in mavolous faceplants.

take care Steve.


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jagur - Random Unicyclist

smoke me a kipper, i'll be back for breakfast.
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