One’s ability to ride a unicycle is similar to that of riding a bicycle; one learns the skill for life, however the similarities don’t extend much deeper. Many skills that one learns on a unicycle are heavily confidence/form related, so unless one is really relaxed and confident, extended skills such as freemounting, idling, hopping etc can be seemingly lost, at least till the confidence returns. Another aspect of one’s abilities on a unicycle that suffers adversely with long pauses is the speed; when we are less sure, we find that we simply can’t push harder, so the top-speed becomes very conservative.

Here’s how I’ve fared across the years

2021: the watershed year

Back in 2021, when I was out and getting myself a bellyful of riding, I found myself pushing the envelop slowly, but steadily. The first time I achieved an average speed of 10+ km/h was when I averaged 10.5 km/h across a 12.62 km ride on Apr 19, 2021, when my top speed on the 29-er was 14.8. After that, I keep pushing and improving, and on June 4, 2021, I touched my highest average speed of 13.2 km/h with a top speed of 17.6 km/h, again on the 29-er. Generally, the bigger wheel, the faster one can be, but that’s in theory; in practice, the bigger the wheel, the more important confidence is, in order to get going. For a long time, I’d been unable to go faster than 12 km/h on my biggest wheel, the 36-er, May-June of 2021 was an active period for me. On May 17 2021, I reached a top speed of 19.8 km/h on my URC 29-er, and on May 20 2021, I hit a max of 18 km/h on my Nimbus Nightfox. On Jun 18 2021, I touched 21.96 km/h on my KH-36 unicycle, riding often in bands of 17-18 km/h. Unfortunately, that was the last time I rode the KH-36 in 2021 and the lack of practice on it made me stop riding it, something I’ve not undone yet, as of Febuary 21 of 2025. I recorded a total of 107 outdoor uni rides in 2021 and aggregated around 918 km.

bash getmileage.sh 2021
KH-36
Num rides: 3
Mileage: 32.36 km

URC Roadrunner 29
Num rides: 77
Mileage: 735.63 km

Nimbus II 24
Num rides: 19
Mileage: 93.68 km

Nimbus Nightfox 36-er
Num rides: 8
Mileage: 56.25 km

Total Uni rides in year 2021: 107
Total Uni mileage in year 2021: 917.92 km

2022

A very silent year with the little unicycling that was done being indoors. A couple of rides with the 29-er show me riding around 14-15 km/h. Aggegated mileage was 26 km.

2023

I recorded 28 unicyling activities the whole year, of which 13 were indoor rides. In the remaining rides, the longest was a 11.45 km ride that I rode the 29-er with Amol for company, and I recorded a top speed of around 15 km/h. Aggregated mileage was 65 km.

2024

A mere 11 activities were recorded and all but two of them were indoor. The only outdoor rides were done in October of 2024; I recorded a 2.4 km ride on the Nimbus 2 24 where I recorded a top speed of 12.26 when I did a shake-down style ride around the NSC data-halls. Two days later, I did something similar with the 29-er, where I recorded a max speed of 14 km/h.

2025

As on Feb 22 2025, I’ve completed 11 activities, of which 7 are indoors. Of the remaining, I have ridden a 5km ride each on the 24” Nimbus 2 and the URC 29-er, clocking top speeds of 10 km/h on the 24” and 13.5 km/h on the 29-er. The goal is therefore to keep pushing at the pace and hopefully get the speed on the URC in the region of at least 17-18 km/h. I also wish to ride the 36-er and see if I can go beyond the 21 km/h I recorded back in 2021.