DC Uni

I leave in two days for Nova Scotia for Ride The Lobster! I am on Team Goonies (Listed as team #1 on the team listing - Race > Teams). I will be joined by Spencer Owen and Joe Marshall from Nottingham, England. My friend Stephanie Thornton will be joining the team as the support driver. Steph, Spencer, and I will drive up to Annapolis Royal where the festivities will begin on Saturday.

I am really excited about this race, as it is the first unicycle race of its kind. 800km in 5 days, with one of the days having a Criterium and a Time Trial. I was hoping to get a lot more training in with my geared 29, but I had a bad knee injury when I attempted to ride from Pittsburgh to DC. I believe the injury was caused from having too much weight attached to my unicycle combined with having too much weight on my back. The awkwardness of it must have wrecked my knee. I was out of training for 4 weeks, and I have only just begun training on the geared 29 again. I will be bringing both my Nimbus Nightrider 36er AND my 29″ guni to the race. This relates once again to the lack of training I was able to do because of my knee. The geared 29er is a lot harder on my knees than the 36er with short cranks, so I will be switching between the two of them throughout the race.

I am looking forward to meeting up with the 34 other unicycle teams from all over the world. Even if the Goonies don’t finish in the top 10, it will be quite an adventure.

The website will have frequent updates during the race, so be sure to check the stats each day and wish Team Goonies and me luck!

Last week I received a message from a unicyclist from Romania, Flaviu, who was visiting the DC area for a few days. He was eager to meet another unicyclist in the area and to go for a ride. I was already planning on taking my new Nimbus Nightrider 36 out on the C&O Canal to train for the Pittsburgh to DC ride I will be doing with Zach in two weeks, so I invited him along and let him use my old 36er. The original goal of the ride was to test the terrain of the C&O canal and to test out our camping gear, but since Flaviu was with us now we decided to also do a brief 4 mile stroll of the National Mall. After unicycling around the Smithsonian and Mall we headed over to Georgetown and grabbed some food to take with us on the trip. I showed Flaviu the stairs from the movie “The Exorcist” and then we were off on our way on the C&O Canal.

Flaviu has only had experience with 29″ and smaller wheels, but he was doing great at keeping up with Zach and me on the trail as if he had been riding a 36″ wheel for years. During our breaks he practiced riding one foot and wheel walking the 36er, which he was able to do succesfully! I was also able to wheel walk quite well on the 36er with the seat adjusted a little higher, but then Flaviu showed me up and was able to do one foot wheel walking for a little while. The best part of the day was riding on the canal near Great Falls. The views were amazing and the path was nice and smooth. The only downside to the riding on the canal was that there were heaps of bugs all over the place that all seemed to aim for my eyes. We rode for about 16-17 miles on the canal before stopping at the hiker/biker campground. There was a site open and we set our stuff down and relaxed for a bit before building up a fire and setting up our tarps. I called my friend Lindsay up who was eager to join the camping and she drove to the campground and brought hotdogs and a tent. We relaxed by the fire for a while and then went off to bed at around 11:30PM.  

Problems at night:

Flaviu did not have a ground pad so he insisted on sleeping on the table for insulation. The only problem with this was that it was raining and the tarp was not set up properly over himself (it was too close to his body). Needless to say, he did not sleep well at all and his sleeping bag(my extra sleeping bag) got soaked. Luckily though it was a synthetic bag and he was able to stay warm at least. We all awoke early in the morning and it was still drizzling outside. We geared up and got back on our way home and headed back on the canal trail. The rain picked up shortly after and then we hit the middle of a thunderstorm. We kept on riding and stopped every now and then to clear the mess of mud and dirt that flicked up onto our saddles and shorts. We got back into Georgetown, crossed the Key Bridge and got on the metro at Rosslyn. The ride back was dry and fast and when we got back to Vienna we cleaned up and said goodbye to Flaviu who was quite tired from the not sleeping too well. Even with the bad luck at night, he said he still had a great time and was glad he met up for the ride.

Things learned from this trip:

1) I need to bring sunglasses with me (even if they are clear lenses) because the bugs can be awful.

2) 6′ x 8′ tarp is not big enough to keep all the rain off of you, I will be using a 8′ x 10′ for the actual ride.

3) Riding C&O Canal in the rain is a great way to dirty up your brand new unicycle. When I got home I had to hose off the unicycle and then wipe it down. I also took off the frame and had to get some gunk out of the bearing holders.

4) The Nightrider Tire definitely picks up a lot of pebbles that get stuck in the tread (especially when riding on the C&O canal trail!)

Last Saturday (Mar. 29th) my friend Zach and I decided to get some training in before we take off and do our ride from Pittsburgh to DC in a month (more details to come about that ride in a future post), so we headed out to DC to do the popular Mt. Vernon trail. We took the metro to the Rosslyn stop and then walked a few blocks to the trail head. The Mt. Vernon trail is a favorite cycle path amongst local cyclists and goes for 18 miles from DC to Mt Vernon along the Potomac. It was a great ride and I kept a really fast pace (15-16mph I guess) on my new geared 29er. I have never passed so many bikes before or said “on your left” so much while riding a unicycle! The only annoying part of the ride was in Alexandria where we had to ride on the street and there was a detour that was poorly signed. Other than that we made great time to Mt. Vernon and took a short break before turning around.

I had spoken to Silvia, a unicyclist from the forums, about meeting up on my way back from Mt. Vernon because she had recently got a Nimbus 36 and wanted to ride with someone. We met up near Reagan National Airport and she did the last 6-7 miles with Zach and me. She is new to distance unicycling so we didn’t go too fast, and I popped my guni into low gear for the last 7 miles of the trip. It was actually a decent pace and she was doing quite well for just getting the 36. It was actually a nice break from riding super fast in high gear and just cruising on the trail taking in the sights.

After finishing the trail (36 mi round trip), we crossed the Key bridge and met up with my friends Jason and Stephanie who had biked to Georgetown from Silver Spring MD. We had planned to meet up and ride near the Monument to check out the Kite festival and the Cherry Blossoms. It was quite crowded, but we managed to cycle past the crowds and get to the monuments. The cherry blossoms looked great, and seeing tons of kites in the sky near the monument was quite awesome. All in all…it was a great day of riding in the DC area!

A few weeks ago I met up with Gracie Sorbello. Gracie rode across America on a unicycle (36er) two years ago and posted to a blog. We were exchanging emails after I asked her a few questions about what she brought with her on her unicycle tour across the States. I found out that she would be driving through the DC area and so we decided to get together and do a XC/muni ride since she just got a KH 29er. I set up my old Yuni 29er with 150mm cranks and a new Kenda Navegal tire. My friend Mike also joined up for the ride on his mountain bike.

Fountainhead is perfect for a XC ride on a 29er and I was able to do a lot more of the technical bits than I was able to do on the coker a few months ago. Gracie was still getting used to her KH 29 and had a little trouble with a bit more of the technical parts of the ride, but did amazingly well for someone who doesn’t ride Muni much.

Some memorable parts of the ride were:
1) The Teeter Totters in the middle of the loop. They are really fun to ride on, and I did them quite consistently. Gracie tried and got really close to getting it, but had to give up when she got a really bad pedal bite (see the pictures below).  I also posted a video of me going up/down one of the ramps.
    
2) Towards the end of the ride, I tried going up a steep ramp over a fallen tree, but faceplanted and fell on my left hand really hard. My middle finger was in some pain and was swelling up pretty bad. I actually had to go to the doctors office the next day to see if it was broken, but luckily it was just a sprain.  There is nothing like seeing the reaction on a doctor’s face after he asks “How did you injure yourself?” and gets the response of “Well…I was mountain unicycling and….”.  I didn’t get past that before he said “Say no more”.
3) There is one really technical bit towards the end that you have to go over a log and then down a steep set of logs that are sort of like stairs and continue down some rocky/rooty technical descent. It wasn’t as scary as it looked, and I ran up back the trail to do it multiple times.

I am getting lazy posting updates to this blog, but a few weeks ago on Saturday, March 1st, Joey from Fredericksburg gathered a bunch of unicyclists together to meet up at the 2008 Congress of Jugglers on campus at the University of Maryland. Although it is mostly a juggling event, we were able to play some unicycle hockey and try out a bunch of cool unicycles. One of which was a custom made giraffe unicycle that was geared down and had a small roller blade/shopping cart wheel on the bottom. It felt really weird to ride and it was really fun to do pirouettes with! Joey and I also both brought our BC wheels and were riding those around the gym.

My friend Stephanie wanted to try out some shorter cranks on the unicycle I let her borrow. Since we were swapping cranks out anyway, we decided to set up the unicycle kangaroo style, which is where both of the cranks are facing the same direction and are parallel to each other. I tried riding it, but it was to no avail. The Unicycle Lady from DC/Baltimore was able to ride it with a little help getting started and it was quite impressive.

There were anywhere from 10-15 people with unicycles at the event and it was quite fun meeting everyone. Joey posted a compilation video on youtube of the event:

The video from the Great Falls ride is now up on WUSA9’s website. You can watch the video here. You can also just check out the article if you don’t want to watch the video.

A few things to note:
1) They cut me off after saying “sport” the second time. My line was “People are trying to make it an extreme sport and make it more of a sport out there for the….” something something crowd…I forget what I said exactly, but where they cut me off makes me sound kind of stupid haha.
2) At the end of the video one of the newscasters says “They are both 13 and braver and stronger than I”. I am pretty sure that people watching the interview could gather that I was not that age and that he made a stupid mistake…but…either way…i am in fact 23.
3) I fall in the video and I am actually glad they showed that part.
4) The newscaster at the end stole a line from my interview and made it seem like what he said was something he came up with. The whole thing about unicycling being the purist form of cycling due to the lack of gears and brakes (even though some unicycles do have brakes and gears…even some that I own).

Either way…Enjoy!

A while back, Max was contacted by WUSA9 because they wanted to to a segment on “extreme unicycling”.  Max set up an interview for him and me at Great Falls off the Difficult Run trail for yesterday. The goal was to get some natural trials on the rocks near the river and some action shots of us riding off the trail.  Max is a much better trials rider than I am so he was gapping some of the rocks and jumping all around.  I did a few jumps on the rocks, but nothing too extreme.  The water level was really high since it rained the night before, which limited how far we could go out.  I ended up popping my tire after jumping off a rock onto some rocky ground.  First time I have ever popped my tire on my Trials!

Max and I were interviewed about extreme unicycling and why we enjoy the sport.  His dad was actually interviewed too and asked about how he feels about Max doing these sort of things haha. 

They also filmed me riding my coker and interviewed me about how I commute to work on my unicycle and do distance riding. I am not sure when the piece will air, but I will try to capture it and post it on here when it does.  Stay tuned!

Over Thanksgiving weekend Ben from MD, Seamus from Maine, Max from Northern VA, and I got together to do a mountain unicycling ride at Fountainhead park.  Ben rode a Torker AX 29, Seamus and Max were on Torker DXs, and I was on my coker with 150mm cranks.  The weather couldn’t have been better.  It was sunny and the leaves on the trees in the park were all different colors.  The trail was mostly covered by fallen leaves which made it hard to see the rocks and roots, but it was a great day for a ride!  Here is a youtube compilation video of the ride:

The videos were taken with my camera, and they are not the greatest quality, but it is better than nothing. Max and I are going to try to get another ride going at Fountainhead and hopefully get more people interested.

On Saturday I drove on down near Harrisonburg, VA to meet up with Nick, a unicyclist from Maryland, who was skiing for the weekend at Massanutten.  Nick got his Nimbus 36″ uni over Summer and is a great rider for the amount of time he has had his unicycle.  We managed to fit both 36ers in my Corolla and set off for the Shenandoah National Park entrance at Swift Run Gap (off 33).  We rode south from the entrance since the road was closed up North due to ice/snow on the road.  My unicycle was making some weird creaking noises so we had to stop a lot in the beginning, but I ended up just dealing with the noise and riding since I couldn’t figure out what was causing it.  Nick had on 150mm cranks and I was on 125s.  We ended up doing a little over 20 miles since we started late in the day and didn’t want to go too far because of dusk.  This section of Skyline Drive proved not to be as draining as the Front Royal section I wrote about earlier.  There were definitely a few long sections of climbing though and towards the end of the ride Nick had to take a break on one of the uphills.  Overall it was a great day for riding and there were very few cars that passed us.  I only took three photos, and only one of those has unicycles in it!  The three photos on this post were taken when Nick and I took a break at a look out during a long stretch of uphill.

After finding out that the 100 mile ride didn’t technically qualify me for ride the lobster, I decided to qualify two days after the 100 mile ride and work my usual commute to work on my unicycle into the equation.

I did a lot of night riding on these rides, and both days were reallllly cold and windy.

Day 1 was commuting and 20 miles extra
Day 2 was commuting and riding into DC after work.

Monday - Day 1 of qualifying:
——————

Woke up and stretched and had a banana before gearing up for the cold and windy weather outside. My usual ride into work is about 8 miles, but I decided to extend it to 10 miles in the morning. All of this was done in pretty bad wind that was almost blowing me off my unicycle. I got into work a little later than I usually do and brough my uni to my cubicle since I forgot my bike lock and went down to the gym to shower.

Mondays after work I usually ride to my friend’s place and watch heroes and eat some pizza since Jerry Sub and Pizza has 5 dollar larges on Monday. After work I put on my light and rode 10 miles out of the way from my office and hooked up with the W&OD trail again and rode the same direction I rode on Saturday. The point to this was that I would ride 10 miles down and turn around and end at my friend’s place, so that I would do 20 miles after work before eating some pizza. When I got to his place I was freezing cold since the whole ride was in the dark and the wind picked up even more than the morning! I was wishing I had brought my balaclava with me. Either way, I got inside to the warmth and realized that my toes were numb. I took off my socks and saw my big toes had lost most of their color. It was pretty brutal outside (for me at least), but I knew that I had pizza coming.

My friends and I sat down and ate 3 large cheese pizzas and watched the last episode of Heroes. By now I had warmed up and put back on my cycle clothes and an extra pair of socks and unicycled home (10 miles).

I got back at 1130pm or so and took a shower and went to bed.

Monday’s stats: distance: 40 miles/ 64.4 km
Night riding: 30 miles / 48.3km
Strong winds: 40 miles/ 64.4km
Rating: 177
(Didn’t include the cold temperatures or the elevation profile, but looking up the profile and calculating the ascend/descend miles is annoying.)

Most of the ride was in the dark and all of it was in strong winds…which made me wish I had longer cranks than 114.

Tuesday’s ride - Day 2
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Same routine as Monday morning (woke up/stretched/banana), unicycled to work with an additional 2 miles to make it 10 in the morning. Today I wanted to do something different though and decided to call up my friend Zach again and unicycle to DC after work. He decided to join me and we planned on meeting up after work outside my office.

Once again…it was windy…even windier than yesterday! It was also colder, but in the morning riding into work it wasn’t too bad since the sun was out. However after work at around 530pm it was completely dark and freezing outside! The actual temperature was below freezing, but according to weather.com it “felt like” 22F. The wind made it horrible, but I brought my balaclava with me into work and decided to just go for it anyway. Zach and I cycled from my office and made our way onto the W&OD trail. I put some of those chemical toe warmer packs into my shoes, but they didnt seem to be helping much. My mouth was getting almost numb so I put the bottom part of the balaclava over it and kept on riding till we reached Whole Foods in Vienna. We reached it after 12 miles or so of riding. I bought some food and warmed up inside. We took our time and stayed in there for a good 30 minutes or so and I put another set of warmers into my shoes (this time hand warmers) and my toes were starting to feel the heat.

I looked ridiculous by the way…with a balaclava, a helmet with a huge light on top, clear lens glasses to block the wind and a bright orange bike jacket. I got a lot of strange looks.

We left and rode the rest of the way on the trail and connected with the Custis trail and kept on riding through Arlington and eventually made our way to the end of the trail and crossed the Key Bridge over into Georgetown. I rode with traffic on M street and put my light on strobe to get more attention from cars. I got a lot of “WOAH, WHAT THE HELL!”s from people and “WHAT IS THAT” from others who were strolling through Georgetown. I had to hop in place a lot at the traffic lights and eventually we made it down to Pennsylvania ave and turned right and rode all the way down to the White House where I took some victory photos. Afterwards, we decided to just stroll around for a while and rode down to the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial and around the WWII memorial and around the mall for a nice night time DC ride.

The funniest comment I got was when I was coming up to a couple behind them and my headlight engulfed their path and a woman turned around and went “AH! Oh…I thought that was from an alien!” .

Anyway, we met my friend’s sister at the Smithsonian metro stop and got on the metro back home. A few people talked to me on the metro and asked the usual questions.

Overall…it was a very windy and cold night, but it was a fun ride. Riding around the monuments in DC at night is really cool. They look a lot better and there are no annoying groups of tourists blocking the paths.

Stats:
Distance: 10 miles in morning, ~30 at night to get to the trail and to DC and including the distance we went from Georgetown to the Monuments and around.
There were definitely some large Ascents and Descents on the ride, but I am too lazy to look up the elevation profile for this ride, so I won’t include it.
All in the wind, 30 miles at night.
Distance: 40 mi
Wind: 40 mi
Night Riding: 30 miles
Extreme Temperatures: 30 miles (I’ll include it today because WOW it was cold)
Rating: 239

I fit the ride in with my normal unicycling commute, and it turned out not to be that bad. I am still surprisingly not sore at all and have no knee pain like I usually do. I have done 180 miles of riding since Saturday, 85 of which were at night. I’m glad I bought that light!