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

Hey everybody,

Before I get into anything, I'd like to totally superly thank everybody
for all the props and congratulations; it definitely feels quite amazing
to think I've got a world record in anything at all, much less something
as cool as unicycling. This has definitely been quite a trip for me, to
say the least.

If it's all right, I'd like to address some of the concerns I read
about over in the marathon results thread in a separate thread (this
thread) to kind of hopefully... air things out a little. Also, without
claiming to know more than those who've already spoken on the matter,
I'd like to take the liberty of describing the direction I see road
unicycling going in the future. Not that I'm necessarily an authority
on the matter, but I just feel more comfortable posting in a new
thread, where maybe we can have a positive discussion or none at all if
we're not in the mood. It felt sort of funny being the subject of the
small bit of heat in the other thread(s) from a couple days ago, when
what follows is how I've been thinking for the past weeks. I'm only a
small part of what's to come, and don't think I deserve that kind of
attention! (and I didn't even beat Ken or Jan by very much in the
marathon (and Ken was on a geared 29!)!) Anyway, there seems to still
be a bit of tension regarding the whole geared vs. ungeared issue,
particularly with kinds of things like
what-performance-means-who's-better-than-who or
who-could-beat-who-on-what-equipment, but more importantly, what all
this means for the future of the sport.

I don't really think I did anything awesome during RTL or Unicon, other
than to make the point that there's a whole lot of room for improvement
in the sport of road unicycle racing right now. I think we all made
that crystal clear when -seven- of us, both geared and ungeared, broke
the 10km world record on Sunday while weaving through throngs of riders
on 20" and 24" unicycles on gravel roads. I also agree with Ken about
the implications of the fact that none of last Unicon's top riders were
on geared 36 setups. Nothing that's happened at RTL or at Unicon proves
that I'm a faster rider than anyone or everyone else. To those who've
defended my recent riding as something amazing, I can't thank you
enough for your votes of confidence, but everything I (or anyone!) have
done so far can be nothing more than a starting point, and I'm planning
on being quickly rendered obsolete once we get some really insane
riders on these new geared rides. The racing ahead will be very
intense, indeed. There are definitely plenty of ungeared riders right
now who are planning on going geared soon, and I'm looking forward to
the competition. I don't know who will be fastest once we're all on
efficient (geared!) unicycles, but, case in point, I'm not expecting it
to be me.

That said, I think the notion that a geared 36" can allow someone unfit
to get a record doesn't really hold much water. I definitely believe
that the geared 36" significantly broadens the base of people capable
of beating the records; no one disputes that. But to do so on a geared
36" requires a different type of fitness; whereas "fitness" for an
ungeared rider would entail a quick, light spin at insane cadences,
"fitness" for a geared up rider necessitates an ability to consistently
put out large quantities of power for long periods of time in ways that
don't upset the balance of the unicycle. (I can only start to do this;
real cyclists would eat me alive.) As an example, I think Sam and
Dustin are considerably more fit than I am as far as ungeared riding is
concerned. I might be able to compete with them, but I'd definitely not
be faster, not by any means. On a geared uni, hopefully the gap will be
narrower, because I'm much better at pushing things with my legs than
spinning them. All in all, though, a geared rider puts the exact same
amount of energy into the road as an ungeared rider at the same speed;
the crux of it all is that the unicycle must match the body type of the
rider in order to be efficient. I'm thinking I might do better on a 2x36
setup, whereas, say, Sam might be better off spinning more quickly on a
1.5x36. It's not necessarily because I'm more or less fit than anyone,
but because we're all different riders. Furthermore, a "faster
unicycle" is not by any means a ticket into the record books (you have
to actually muscle these things around!), unless the state of the
record books is such that said "faster unicycle" is so much more
compatible with your body that it allows you to beat some things, which
has (so far) been the case for me. Comparing gear-inches and claiming
that higher gear-inches result in more speed, I think, is like
comparing the distances we can pee in still air at standard temperature
and pressure with terrestrial gravity; it's kind of pointless. Up until
now, bigger gears have meant faster riding, but 54" is getting to the
point where it might not behoove some to go bigger, while others may
want to keep going for more. I picture my sweet spot around 70-80",
which is right where I cruise on my bicycle. A 3:1 36er would be pretty
stupid for me, but maybe not for someone who can leg-press six of me.

To attempt to further dispel the notion that a geared unicycle allowing
unfit people to get records is a "Real Bad Thing," I want to put forward
that even if an unfit rider can get a record, it only means that the
record is ripe for the picking, and will soon be lifted back out of
reach of the masses by the top riders who will reclaim it by doing what
the unfit rider did to break it. If it isn't reclaimed soon by a top
rider, then it, well, pretty much deserves to be slow for the available
equipment, because there's no excuse to not go as fast as you can go. I
think that includes money, too, as $2,000US for a top-end world-record
capable unicycle is only a fraction of what many not-so-strong
Joe-Schmoe cyclists spend on their road bikes. If a record is fast,
it's because someone wanted badly enough to really set it in the sky.
(Just to be clear, I don't think my two records are very fast, given
what should be possible on a geared 1.5x36, or especially on a geared
unicycle in general.)

Also, Ken is absolutely right that the feats of ungeared riders of
years' past should not be overshadowed by the new wave of geared
madness. Not many of us can ride like Sam and Roger and Dustin and Ken
except, well, Sam and Roger and Dustin and Ken and the few other
ungeared elites. These guys spin like I can only dream of spinning.
Does it make them more "fit" than me? For ungeared unicycles, yeah,
definitely. For geared unicycles? We'll see; they haven't yet had a
chance to show us what they can do with them yet, and when they get
their gears, the racing will be on! I'm definitely not in a comfortable
spot here, because these guys are beasts! That said, perhaps the mad
spinning of years' past should be preserved in a separate category of
"fixed 36-inch and under" wheel records, but even then, some records
have been set on 43+ inch ungeared wheels, and further, based on that
line of logic, there should be no reason to have separate records for
every wheel size, which would be something I think we all would deem
wholly unnecessary. We already have a 24" limit; perhaps we should have
a 36" limit, then a true "unlimited" category, where anything on one
human-powered wheel is fair game. Formerly limited to 36" wheels, it
seems that the unlimited category started to mature to the point where
the records were getting tough to beat, and now that we have gears
riders beginning to be capable of using them, many of us are clamoring
for limits to what was originally "unlimited." So, where do you draw
the line and stop making new categories? I'm not going to claim to know
that just yet. Right now, despite the
bigger-than-36"-fixed-wheels-already-having-records inconsistency, I
think I'm in favor of a third category, a fixed-36-and-under,
containing all records except mine and Signe's at Unicon just now, and
including the previous records made on 40-something inch wheels. This
opinion, though what seems like the best option right now, doesn't
completely jive well with me, because I don't think we should be
spawning new categories every time there's a technological advance.

Road unicycling is growing up, and I think this tension is quite akin
to a growing pain. I consider myself extremely lucky to be at the
forefront of it with all the other fast riders who competed at the
front of RTL and the 10k/marathon, at the birth of the "really viably
fast unicycle" era. Granted, we're still nowhere near the bikes, but
the gearing and quality of the unicycles will undoubtedly allow someone
in the future (undoubtedly much stronger than any of us right now) to
seriously tear it up and do something comparable to what is done on
upright bicycles. I'm pretty sure that 22 miles in an hour would be
possible with on a simple 1.5x36 setup with short cranks and good
conditions and a really fast rider, but with, say, 175mm cranks and a
2-or-3 to 1 gear ratio on 36" plus years of training and balance, I'd
bet that 26+ miles should be possible in an hour on a unicycle. By no
means am I the rider to pull off that kind of a feat, but I'm sure some
of the serious cyclists I sometimes ride with would be able to do it if
they let themselves get comfortable on such a machine. As a comparison,
I'm pretty sure I could do around 24-25mph for an hour on a well-fit
road bike, and if I were to attempt the unicycling hour record right
now, I think I could peg it around 19 or 19.5mph, but not quite the
magic 20 just yet. Seeing as there are folks who can do 30 miles in an
hour on a road bike, I'm sure that if you gave one a good gear ratio
and taught him how to ride, he'd push through 25 or so miles on a
well-fit, stiff unicycle. For me at least, that's unthinkable. I think,
for any of us right now, 25mph for an hour is pretty much comprehensible
only as a dream. There are seriously -plenty- people that strong,
though. Back at school in Irvine, I frequently ride my road bike with a
bunch of 30-50+ year old guys, and the majority of them can crush me at
any time they choose, so soundly that I wouldn't be able to stay on
their wheels for 60 seconds even if I dropped the hammer and went
completely anaerobic in their drafts. In USA Cycling, I'm a Cat 5
rider, maybe strong enough to be at the strong end of Cat 4, but not
yet sufficiently experienced. I can't touch many Cat 3 riders, and
there's 2, 1, and Pro after that. Assuming unicycling's new development
of geared hubs will attract ever-better athletes to the sport, all
common sense dictates that my piddly two records here at Unicon (and
any others I'll hopefully try to have the honor of setting in the near
future) are just begging to be smashed.

Before I go, I want to say that, by beating these records, I mean no
disrespect to anyone, and I'm honored to be able to be at the front of
this revolution, so to speak, even if it's only for the obligatory
fifteen minutes. Geared hubs have really opened up the world to road
unicycling as we know it, and this is only the beginning. Riding these
speeds geared up has only given me more respect for the abilities of
the ungeared champions, and I hope that records continue to be broken
at the rate they have been as of late, regardless of whether or not the
riders are geared. Like many of us, though, I predict that most, if not
all, will be geared.

So, if you've read this far, thanks for reading, and I'd love to know
what you guys think. I really don't want to be the guy who comes in
from nowhere and tries to invalidate years of top quality riding by
suddenly beating it on a new machine. I just happened, at Unicon 2008,
to be the guy who best matched his unicycle, at a time when road
unicycling is in quite the state of flux... and I couldn't be happier
with my fifteen minutes. (so thank you!!)

Beyond all that, all I have left to say is this: *here we go. -To the
future!-*

Chuck


--
chuckaeronut

Uni to work to eat to live to uni to work to...!
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That was an extremely well thought out and informative post. Thanks
very much for sharing your thoughts.


--
peter.bier

-Peter Bier
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That took a while to write, eh?

The insane spinners should all get their records in the limited
category....I'm not sure we have enough decent riders for a third
category anyways.


--
hobo_chuck

~-Just 'cause you're 7 feet tall doesn't mean you should be learning on
a 29er.-
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That was well written Chuck.

I did not want to sound negative at all in the other threads, but I
guess I did and it's not a reflection of you, GUni's in general, and
the way road unicycling is heading. And yes, I did get a bit worked up
(ok, alot worked up) when people started putting down the efforts of
Unguni's, considering the amount of effort that goes into pushing those
things against those of us riding Schlumpfs, and the efforts that went
into previous records- Hour, 100mile, 24hr, Marathon, 10km, etc etc.
For that I can't apologise enough.

To me, a unicycle is the simplest form of transport next to walking.
Thus the best distinction in road unicycling, is not so much the gear
size (you could ride an Unguni with a 42" diameter wheel, or a 29" GUni
which gears it up only slightly higher); but the idea that once you
start putting gears on a unicycle, it is no longer the simple machine
that you started out with.

Are GUni's a bad thing? Hell no....it's taken us a hundred years to
catch up with bicycles by having production gears. This is a step in
the right direction. But for record attempts I think there should be a
distinction between GUni and Unguni records. For the purist, go for the
Unguni records. For someone into pushing the limits of unicycling,
then GUni is the way to go.

You're absolutely right about GUni's favouring different types of
riders. At the moment we still do not have a sufficient range of gears
to choose from, but in bicycling....if you were racing on the track,
going for the same record, some riders will choose a bigger gear,
whilst other riders may prefer to spin a lower gear at high cadence.
Putting a fast spinner on a big gear GUni does not necessarily make
them very fast. But I think as we get more fast riders on GUnis...too
many to name, it will be very interesting indeed, and many records will
fall.

With regards Unicon...it is an unlimited category, and it should be
about pushing technology and speed to it's limits. That's why I rode a
GUni, having seen how we were creamed by a bunch of GUni's at RTL. I
guess part of racing is about securing the best equipment over your
competitors.

In my case, I had a huge advantage over the Unguni riders, and there's
no way I would have beaten them otherwise. But once GUni's become
commonplace, those of us with an early mover advantage will probably
have to try just that bit harder.

It may sound like I'm contradicting myself, maybe I am. But I do think
we need to have two categories...GUni and Unguni. Purely for the reason
I outlined in my third paragraph.

As for how fast we can go in future, I think there is no reason why we
can't get closer to bike speed (at least on the track where only one
gear is needed) once we get the optimum gear ratios, time-trial
position, and most of all, lighter wheels than we have currently in
36".


--
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
details.
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GizmoDuck wrote:
That was well written Chuck.


Ya, I enjoyed reading it.
The first 2/3s anyway...then I had to go look at something else for a
little while.


--
hobo_chuck
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No one is taking anything away from the athlete by saying: From auto
racing to skiiing to any sport that involves a collaboration between
technology and an athlete skilled in using that technology, winning has
always been a collaborative effort.

It's an exciting time, watching how technology exerts an ever greater
influence in unicycling, allowing unicyclists to manifest greater
speeds, drops, and all manner of extremes.

Billy


--
BillyTheMountain

TEAM YAMS member
"'Coincidence' is the hobgoblin of those with no hope of finding an
explanation." --BillyTheMountain
http://www.1800genocide.com/ the first-ever anti-genocide hotline.
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Excellent summation of the situation, Chuck Edwall. I agree that it's
not desirable to create more and more categories. There should be
distinct races for geared and ungeared unis, or at least certainly two
distinct records kept. (OTOH, it's seems like a shame not to preserve
all those std racing uni with 24s and such). Interesting questions for
pondering.


BillyTheMountain wrote:
It's an exciting time, watching how technology exerts an ever greater
influence in unicycling, allowing unicyclists to manifest greater
speeds, drops, and all manner of extremes.

It's tremendously exciting to be involved in this sport at this point in
unicycling's evolution.


--
steveyo

steveyo
...like having your own personal rollercoaster...

- a few 'uni race write-ups'
(http://home.nycap.rr.com/rduhan/uni_race_writeups/)
- muni and kokopelli uni 't-shirts, mugs and stickers'
(http://www.cafepress.com/steveyo)
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I think this summer will be remembered as an inflection point for
unicycle racing, in the way that Kris Holm's arrival at California MUni
Weekend in 1998 is remembered as an inflection point for MUni. A lot of
people did a lot of MUni before then; George Peck's contribution was
particularly noteworthy. But Kris came in and expanded everyone's view
of what was possible in MUni. Now there are dozens of riders who can
ride the kind of stuff that Kris rode in 1998, but it took the arrival
of someone like Kris to bring the sport to that level. And, of course,
Kris himself has pushed the sport forward since then, both through his
riding and his equipment.

10 years from now, we old coots will be reminiscing about that year
when the geared 36ers showed up at RTL and UNICON, how before that a
lot of people didn't think geared unicycles were really faster than
ungeared, and Chuck and the German Speeders came along and showed what
was possible. "The sport was never the same after that, sonny."

I'm not sure I see 26mph as feasible, but I agree that we're just at
the beginning of the curve of where unicycle speeds will go.


--
tholub
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Just reading what you guys wrote I too think it is only logical to
separate the 2. Basically all sports have rules that are designed to
start the competitors on a level playing field. Geared and ungeared is
not a level playing field. Both are worthy of their own recognition.
BTW (seriously, I want an answer) who makes the rules?


--
rem48
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Well, based on the legth and intensity of your post, I'd say you must
have stirred up a yellow jacket nest

I'm not any sort of unicyclist like you, I'm a newbie, but I excel in a
number of other sports where "size" and equipment can quickly lead to an
advanatge. What I'd like to do is offer some suggestion as you how it
can be handled.

In mountain biking, there is often a seperate class for single speed
bikes, of course there usually aren't too many of these folks, however
there are some single speed dedicated races. The idea here is having
gears often results in a faster lap time.

In downriver whitewater kayak racing, the classes are broken up by boat
type and length, the idea being that longer boats are faster boats, and
that specialized racing hulls can be way faster.

In skiing, telemark, though the traditional skiing style, is a bit
slower than alpone skiing due to the nature of the free heel binding.
Freeheelers often hang with alpine skiers, but in racing they can't
compare, so we still have our racing circuit, though it is a shadow of
what alpiners have.

So you see, it doesn't have to be a geared versus ungeared race. We can
ride and race together, but we compete within our class; wheel size,
guni, uneared, age, sex, shoe size, etc...

Now I do have one opinion that you may not like, but I think it still
needs to be said, esp after reading your very long winded rant:

If you bring a burro to a horse race, you aren't really horse racing.

If we go by the assumption that unicycling is a most rediculous form of
transportation, then the idea of racing said cycles is truly silly. This
isn't to say that it shouldn't be done, but we need to take this thing
with a grain of salt.

Talking about setting speed "records" on a unicyle is sorta like saying
I hold the record for hopping on one leg for 26.2 miles. Sure, if you're
missing a leg you might be maximizing your potential as a physicaly
challenged athlete, but a person with two legs setting said record is
just being silly.

Now this is just my opinion, so no need to flame (I'm heat proof
anyhow).

I am as thrilled as the next person with gear advances, but in the end
it's still a unicycle, and unicycling is pretty durn silly


--
Nurse Ben
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