Today was Midsommar, a national holiday, and a day which is generally celebrated with far more enthusiasm and geity in Sweden than even the Swedish National Day. This year though, there were no official celebrations due to COVID-19. I decided early in the day, that I’d do a ride, and I didn’t want to ride particularly long, but would like to try and push the pace a little bit, so decided to do the shorted version of the route I’d come up with, when I’d made the route to Kaga kyrka. This was a 16 km ride and I estimated that I’d be able to knock it off within two hours, or just over it. It was a little past noon, when I left, so I could be back just in time for my lunch, as per my calculations. The temperature was in the high 20 degrees Celsius, so I took a lot of water with me, in the hydration pouch.

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.

I’d done a 30 km bike ride with Shruti in which we’d ridden to Ekängen, and looped back to the city via Rystad. The route was very nice, and included a really nice long bike path which was almost completely uninterrupted by intersections for several kilometers, and that had made me realize that it was ideal for unicycling. On May 27, I decided to do an out-and-back ride along the same route, turning back at or around the 5km mark, to get a 10k ride.

Today, I spent a hour practicing freemounts on the 36-er. WHile I’d learned to freemount the 36-er, I’d not had the fitness to practice it much, as it needs a lot of hopping up and down, which can be tiring. When I wanted to practicing riding longer distance, I actually wanted to avoid the energy drain from all the hopping on and off, and so tried riding with a ski-pole, but now, I wanted to focus my practice on freemounts, so I could ditch the pole for good.

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.

Now that I have a few 5 km + rides on my 36-er, I wondered if I should switch to the short cranks, if only to evaluate the difference, and that’s what I did today. The first few moments were hard, as I struggled to get momementum going. The shorter cranks and tighter spinning circle amongst other things mean that I need to do more work to get off to a start, and it gets more challenging if I’m starting up an incline.

Completed another 5km ride, starting from a little walk to the railway station, to cross over to the other side of the tracks in order to begin my ride across the Sky Apartments (Tornet) and go on further. After I got to Engströms bil, I had a choice to either go right and head further along Bergsvägen, or attempt the big climb immediately after heading left. I was a bit apprehensive about this climb, as it’s a short and steep climb and I see many bikers struggling up or even dismounting their bikes to push it up, but I was determined.

Yesterday, the weather was perfect for an outdoor ride; 14°C and only a light breeze, so I took the 36-er for a ride. I’m now trying to find bike paths with few or no pedestrians and other cycles so I can gain more confidence riding longer distances, so I’d decided to hit Tornbyvägen and try and ride onto Bergsvägen. Bergsvägen is super nice, with long stretches unbroken by crossings or intersections, and with the exception of the odd fully kitted out bicyclist on a road-bike perhaps doing a high speed ride around Lake Roxen, it has few people on it. Tornbyvägen too has relatively long and straight stretches, interrupted only by a few traffic lights, where the bike path crosses the main streets.

For the last couple of days, I’ve been practicing riding in real-world conditions, on the 36-er, in a bid to get more confidence while riding outside, and also get mentally prepared and acclimatized to the challenges of commuting on a unicycle, which has been my goal for a while. While it’s nice to practice on a vacant parking lot or a basketball court while getting started out, it’s important to get used to the real-world conditions as soon as possible. Dealing with imperfect roads, handling surface transitions (dirt to asphalt, asphalt to cobblestone, etc), dealing with changeable winds, biking around obstactles etc are all a part of the real-world experience, and the sooner we get good at it, the better.