I worked on a few routes suitable for unicycle rides today, and I came across a ccouple of improvements for my 13k ride, as I did so. With the changes, I eliminated a segment where I would have to share a relatively narrow stretch of the road with the occasional bus and even the odd truck. With the change, I would be entirely on cycle tracks, except for the intersections, and this was very good. The distance though dropped from 13 km to 11 km, but I’m not too unhappy about it. I came up also with a 19km variation of the same route, with a few additional segments, but since it was past 1700 hrs by the time I was ready with the route, I decided to do the shorter ride instead (11km), as I didn’t want to be out far too long.

For today’s ride, I also carried my backpack with the hydration pack, and it proved to be more valuable as a training tool for practicing balancing while making adjustments to the straps which kept sliding off my shoulders as I rode :) The weather itself was rather cool, so my hydration needs were rather low, but the fact that I had a lot of water meant that I took a deep ‘klunk’ (large sip in Swedish) everytime I had to stop to remount.

The winds didn’t bother me for the first bit, as it had been a steady headwind, something that felt like a mild grade which actually feels quite nice while unicycling, but as soon as I turned westwards, the South/South-East winds were now strong sidewinds, and the occasional gust made it harder to stay balanced. As I compensated against the wind, I realized that I had a second challenge as that segment of the road had a rather large camber, the further I rode to the right, and I didn’t dare ride more to the center as the occasional car that rolled by would pass at a rather high speed. While the passing cars did their best to give me a lot of room as they passed me, I realized that I’d be doing myself a favor if I rode as far to the right as I could manage, while combating both the camber and the wind. Fortunately though, the tricky section was not very long, and the audiobook I happened to be listening to was especially funny, and it gave me something to focus on, other than the challenges. The book is called ‘Gurun i Påmonadalen’, third in the series of books about the fictitious Swedish copywriter Göran Borg, who has a lot of life-changing experiences including building a lasting friendship with an Indian called Yogendra Singh Thakur, who he meets on his maiden trip to India; the books, written in Swedish, are both interesting and entertaining.

After the tricky section of the road, my reward was a long, wide, and easy section with excellent visibility. I crossed the bridge over the European Expressway 4, which makes for an interesting experience in itself. It’s fun to ride on the bridge, as cars and trucks whizz below me at speeds in excess of 100 km/h. Before long, I got to Talboda Centrum, where I crossed the road and crossed again onto Nörrköpingsvägen, and realized it was a good choice, and had an uneventful remainder of the ride, as I knew the rest of the route very well, thanks to my many trips to Netonnet, along that same route. I found myself less tired than usual, another indication that I’m getting both stronger and more efficient. A post-ride peek at the ride data showed that I’d spent as much as 94% of my moving time in a Z2 as per my heart-rate zones, and that the heartrate had stayed nominal right through, with a peak of 171 and an average of 140 bpm. It was a nice ride, for sure.