One thing that came up while I was discussing my 36-er freemounting issues on a Facebook group was a running/walking mount; a walking mount requires lesser energy, as the jump doesn’t need to be as intense as with a static mount. The problem for me though, was working through my anxiety, as the idea of walking/running and hopping onto the ginormous wheel made me squeamish. Here’s a video by Jim Thode which helped me visualize it better.

I started practicing the walking mount with a 24” unicycle, as it was a lot less intimidating. Once I got a bit comfortable, I then did the same with a 29-er, and then finally took on the 36-er, and it worked!

The version of the walking mount that I do is something I call the Shane Warne mount; the legendary late Aussie bowling great had a very leisurely run up during which he’d pretty much walk up, before he’d give a little hop and deliver the ball. I’d like to emulate that very style, i.e. walking leisurely for a bit and then hopping up and riding away. Here’s a video from a while ago, from when I was beginning to land the walking mounts.

I wondered for a while if I’d ended up learning the walking mount, while ending up losing the ability to land static mounts, but once my confidence went up a few notches, I was once again able to land my static mounts too, but when I compare the two, it’s clear that the walking mount requires far lesser energy and is less dependent on me being fully fresh, in order to be able to land my mount attepmts consistently.