Hello all!
This 100 mile solo unicycle ride was one of the most exciting and challenging experiences of my life! I actually did 104 miles, and 58,240 wheel revolutions! No wonder I'm achy the next day, but it was for such a great cause! I'm leaving the donation page for the American Cancer Society open for at least another week, so people can still make donations. The link is on the home page of my website,
UniGeezer
Here's my writeup and the link to the video documentary is at the bottom:
At about mile 25 I heard a loud "pop" which turned out to be a broken spoke! This instantly made the wheel wobbly and unstable. Luckily, I had brought 3 spare spokes, so I was able to replace it, but my spoke wrench was too small to tighten it! (I just assumed it would fit! ) After about 15 minutes I was able to find someone with the right tool, and was up and riding again.
Then, 15 miles later ANOTHER spoke broke! Now I was down to only one spare. I decided to loosen each spoke 1/4 turn to reduce tension, and from then on had no more spoke problems. Fortunately for me, not really knowing how to true a wheel (But now I will learn!) it was still in decent true!
I did the extra 4 miles because when the second spoke broke, I must've inadvertently moved that little magnetic sensor disc that reads mileage on my cycle computer! It was only after I'd gone about 4 miles that I discovered it was not registering, so I stopped and re-aligned it to the transmitter thing.
So at the end of my ride, even though I would have gone 100 miles, the computer would have only logged 96 due to that 4 mile glitch. So I decided to ride the extra 4, just because I wanted it to show 100 miles, lol! So 104 total.
I met two really nice cyclists along the way; a guy named Michael Castro on his 3-wheeled recumbent; he rode with me for about 40 miles, and later, a guy named Jerry on a 24" schwinn unicycle tagged along for a little while.
Summing up, after starting my trek at 5:30 am, I finally completed my ride at 4:34pm, 11 hours and 4 minutes later! This total time included the spoke repairs, breaks, slowing for traffic lights and congested bike paths and some pedal hole changes on the last leg: I tried to get it under 11. Oh well, maybe next time I can shoot for that "100-10-1" thing! Two out of three ain't bad I guess!
And although I stuffed myself with 5 power bars, 6 energy gels, 2 bagels and about 12 pounds of water during the ride...and a WHOLE pizza after the ride, I woke up this morning THREE pounds lighter! But then again, I probably burned tons of calories on the ride, and probably some more while I slept!
I look forward to mapping out more uni-century rides, at least once every year now. I'm hooked!
Video Documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukMrYe9W7bA"
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