Today, I crossed a milestone of 50+ km of outdoor riding on my 36-er on my ride to Rydskogen and back. When I start the session, it’s a bit hard to make a clean getaway up an incline, but after a few minutes of warming up, it gets a lot easier. Hopefully, with more practice, I’ll find it easier to simply hop on the unicycle and ride off, without stuttering at the start.

As I start off from my apartment, the ride upto the top of Vasavägen and till the turnoff under the bridge onto Hjälmgatan is the boring part, as I’m not fully warmed up, and the uneven roads/traffic lights and intersections make for an uninteresting ride. Once I turn onto Hjälmgatan, it immediately gets interesting as there’s a steady and challenging climb that requires some determination, concentration, and some stubbornness to keep pushing as the lactic acid quickly builds in the legs; I breathe rythemically and picture myself climbing a flight of stairs as I slog slowly uphill. Slogging up further, the road changes to Bjälbogatan and then the right turn onto the ultra-wide bike path on Stenbrötsgatan. I have yet to make it all the way up the climb and execute a right onto Stenbrötsgatan, without getting off, but I look forward to doing it.

The ride into Rydskogen from Stenbrötsgatan is a flattish slightly downhill stretch, which places a lot of load on the legs as I still apply a small amount of back-pressure almost constantly. As I gain more and more confidence, I’m sure I’ll be able to bring down the amount of back-pressure I apply, thereby relieving a lot of strain on the legs. Making it down the steep descent and then up the short and steep climb into Rydskogen is a challenge in itself, and I hope to be able to successfully execute it sometime, but it didn’t happen today. Once inside Rydskogen, my ride kind of resets and I start the ride in the direction of Nya Rydskolan. The road there is a gentle climb for the most part, and as I’ve pointed out before, gentle climbs feel really nice on the legs, as one doesn’t have to apply any back-pressure whatsoever. After I reached the end of the road, where it branches into the various streets leading to the houses in Ryd, I decided to turn back and head home. I’d clocked slightly less than 3.5 km at that point.

As I started riding back towards Rydskogens Motioncentrum, I saw a flash of green in my rearview mirror, and saw that I was my colleague and friend Peter K, who was out on a spin on his inlines. We chatted for a bit as I rode up the climb. I mentioned to him that my longest unbroken distance had been 720 meters, which I’d set earlier on the same day, but as I rode up the climb, I felt more and more relaxed and confident, and I was able to chat with Peter all the while as I first rode uphill, and then, the real challenging part was when I rode down the steep slope just outside of Rydskogen, where I had to really apply a lot of back-pressure to prevent the wheel from gaining too much momentum. After the worst had passed, I continued further, and to my pleasant surprise, managed to ride a full 1.42 km before I hopped/slid off the saddle. Peter even shot a video of me, which I have to get from him :) It sure was a fun outing.