I rode my first 20k ride yesterday. The route was something that I didn’t have to spend any time planning, as it was just a ride to Vreta kloster and back, a ride I’ve done scores of times on a bicycle, a bunch of times even accompanied by my wife, and I knew that the surface was perfect. Since I’ve gradually built up the distances on my unicycle rides, I knew that I was capable of lasting the three hours or so it would take me to ride the 20 km, and so off I went, though it was a little late. Though the light is really good now, I prefer to leave before 1800, or at any rate 1900, but it was past 1930, and I wanted to try and focus a bit on my pace too, so I could finish as soon as I could. My current average speed is around 7.5 km/h, which makes for 40 minutes, every 5 kilometers. My aim was to try and keep my pace as even as I could, at or above that average, and I found that I managed pretty well. I rode some really long sections without any unplanned dismounts (UPDs) and I’m really happy about it. I now am really beginning to enjoy riding longer distances, without any breaks. I was able to steadily chug up the Bergsbacken climb, and on my return leg, I was able to negotiate the descent too, without incident.

Now that I’m getting more comfortable with riding straight and long, and mounting the unicycle, I started training today, to be able to ride faster. While learning, I’ve consciously tried to keep the speed of the wheel in check, to prevent it from accelerating to a speed I wasn’t comfortable with, and now, I need to consciously reprogram my brain to override this self-imposed limit. This affects the way I ride downhill too; at the moment, even if there is the smallest hint of a downward slope, I end up using a lot of back-pressure, to bring the speed all the way down to around 6-7 km/h, but I’m now trying to allow myself to increase the minimum speed from the existing 6 km/h to around 10 km/h, even while going downhill. Like other things on a unicycle, this too involves some mental rewiring and redefining of internal safeguards, so it’ll perhaps take some time, but like other skills I’ve learnt, I’ll perhaps suddenly be able to ride faster than I’ve been able to do so before. Today’s ride was a 9 km out and back ride, where I rode onto Bergsvägen, till the turnoff to Sättuna, before turning back. I tried consciously to pedal more forcefully and to piston down with the other foot just as soon as the driving foot was done, to ensure that I didn’t end up having any unintended breaking action. I found that I was able to push harder and with greater confidence up climbs, than one flats and descents, clearly reiterating that it’s not about power delivery itself, but about rewiring the limits in the brain, and to pedal freely and without hesitation.

I’d made a 19 km route earlier this week, but hadn’t ridden this full stretch before, even on a bicycle, so it was exploration of a completely new route, while also making it my longest ever unicycling ride. For these longer rides, one needs to mentally prepare for the hours in the saddle and not the actual distance, as 19 km doesn’t sound like a lot at all, for instance on a bike. However, this distance corresponds to around 3 hours of saddle time, and that’s what I’d prepared for. I’d taken a lot of water in my hydration bag, and drank most of it. It was close to 2200 hrs when I finished, and the sun had already gone down, so it was dusk. The energy levels seem to drop with the light, and finishing in the dusk was a bit of a challenge, but I kept at it and was very happy when I made it back home, a shade under three hours after I’d started the ride. I know know that I can push on for three hours or more, and will continue to increase the distances gradually, and just by a little each time, so I get used to spending more and more time in the saddle.

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.

2020 will be remembered for being the year in which the world was hit by the COVID-19 virus; 2020 has also been the breakthrough year for me, as far as progress on my unicycle is concerned, and the two are perhaps even related. Since COVID-19 ensured that I started working from home, I was missing the workout I used to get thanks to my daily commute to work and back, and I turned to unicycling, to get some exercise. If the weather was poor, I practiced indoors on the 20” uniccycle, practicing riding backwards and idling. If the weather was good, I went outdoors with the 36-er, and I’ve practiced pretty much every day, in all of May. Yesterday, I did a 5 km ride on the 36-er and found that I’m now very much more efficient and that my calorie burn has significantly tapered off, due to my increased efficiency, and this made me realize that I should now start planning for longer or harder rides.