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Steveyo's Unicycle Race Report
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous 24 Hour Race
May 19-20, 2007
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Loop: 15 km, 350 meter elevation gain/loss
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“You guys are crazy!” a mountain biker said as I leaned on a
trailside tree to let him pass. I
thought about that for a second. A guy
riding a bike at
The race is held each year at Mansfield Outdoor Centre, located on a ridge of the Niagara Escarpment. Where many 24 hour races have port-a-potties, tents and provide little comfort, Lifestyles is known for great accommodations and delicious, endurance-targeted meals. We unicycle guys got our own cabin with beds and a nearby bathroom with hot showers. Another unusual feature of this race is limited enrollment, just 25 teams and 25 solo riders. This is particularly nice for unicyclists as it means we’re not constantly blocking and dodging hundreds of bikers. Once the race was underway and the competitors spread out, we saw very few riders out on the trails.
Roland, who lives near me in
This park is riddled with a profusion of trails, splitting, merging and crisscrossing everywhere, but the race organizers did a phenomenal job with trail marking. There were accurate signs marking each kilometer and reflective arrows and strings of flags corralling racers in the right direction with no uncertainty, even in the dark. The trail passed a central checkpoint three times during the 14k loop, and this was staffed around the clock and meant you were never far from help if it was needed.
Roland went first for Team
Forty minutes after Roland, in came Tim for Team Canada,
quite dejected, carrying a crank and piece of the hub in his hand and rolling
his poor, broken 36er in front of him.
It had broken with about 4K left to go and he’d pushed it all the way
from there. Vince was ready and sped
away, about to do the fastest unicycle lap of the race. He arrived at the finish line in
Meanwhile, our teammate Ryan was still deep in the woods. Ryan was riding a heavy-duty 24 inch muni with a Large Marge rim which may have been beneficial in the sand, but the weight and small wheel required Ryan to work quite hard to complete his lap. The big muni, the hot weather, and some asthmatic issues gave Ryan a devil of a time on his lap. Looking grim, he finally finished three hours later. Ryan staggered up, tagged me, I got on the trail with no time wasted.
The race started with a leisurely loop around a field and a “hey this is easy” feeling. Then, carefully negotiating a sandy 90-degree right turn, the I hit the first serious hill. This climbed steeply, leveled off, climbed, leveled, again and again. I rode several rises, but didn’t make the whole hill. Pushing my cycle to the top, my “hey this is easy” feeling evaporated in heaving gasps.
The trail took a very sharp right and wove down a gently sloping singletrack. I let the wheel roll, glad I’d chosen my 29-inch muni, as it’s quicker than my 24-inch. The turns soon got sharper and steeply banked. Tilting madly up onto each berm, speeding and giggling, I was having as much fun as a cyclist can have.
After some moderate ups and downs, the trail hairpinned maniacally and plunged into the first major downhill. Diving through tight trees, the trail became a madman’s staircase, with a plethora of roots offering dozens of six inch drops, sadistically close together at odd angles. Vince had said he used his brake heavily on the big downhills and now I understood. My KH29 uni pulled downhill more strongly than I could counteract and I UPDed (UPD=Unplanned Dismount) liberally on this and a couple similar sections.
As with any self-respecting singletrack, there were a number of logs lying across the trail. The first was 8 or 9 inches in diameter, and I tried to hop it mid-pedal but failed. The second and third were a bit smaller and I succeeded in clearing them, boosting my confidence immeasurably. Between these obstacles, the banked turns, the climbs and the descents, the trail wound its way through the forest. Each successive kilometer marker I passed injected new energy into my legs and I soon got to an utterly unclimbable (for a unicycle) hill whose reputation I’d learned from previous riders.
It was ridiculously steep and long, with a muddy patch part way up, ensuring failure in the unlikely event one could climb it that far. Pushing up this hill, I passed my only biker of the race, due entirely to a unicycle being easier to push than a bicycle. But I also knew that this marked the hardest remaining obstacle. While it wasn’t quite all downhill from there to the finish, this ascent marked the end of the real difficulties and the rest was a fairly easy cruise.
Finally the trail broke out of the woods, paralleled the
park’s dirt road, and the last downhill kilometer flew by. Approaching the finish, smug that I now had
one lap under my belt, I hit deep, rutted sand just before the finish line. My wheel stopped dead, and I supermanned
forward into the dust for a time of
Despite my graceful finish, I ran up, tagged Owen, and off
he rode for the anchor lap. My legs were
tired but I was already psyched for my next lap. I told
As we chowed down our delicious pasta dinner, Owen came in
and Roland began his second lap, finishing just at sunset. Despite Ryan’s brutally hard ride that
afternoon, he heroically began his second lap as dusk fell. Plagued by asthma and slowed by his heavy
wheel, his headlamp didn’t last his entire lap.
He powered through the sandy finish line shortly after
Most of the bikers use state-of-art helmet and handlebar–mounted lighting systems costing well over $500, which blaze like Frodo’s phial of Galadriel. My headlamp, however, is several years old, and worse, riding only with a headlamp gives little depth perception. My night lap was much slower and filled with many more UPDs, as roots and bumps snuck up and threw me off the unicycle with grueling regularity.
Around the 9K marker my light faded from dull to out and I fumbled into my pack for my emergency light. Though this one was also weak compared to the glaring bikers’ setups, it was infinitely better than pitch dark. I strapped the tiny light around my helmet and dogged on through the woods, buoyed vastly by the aforementioned biker calling me crazy.
Grateful for this second little headlamp, I finally came to
the last downhill kilometer and, fearing I’d run out of batteries, sped to the
end as fast as I dared. Determined not
to repeat my finish-line wipeout, I used extra care. It didn’t matter. The sand stopped my wheel and I face-planted
once again, with a time of
I stumbled into the cabin and Roland’s sleeping bag grumbled “How was it?” “Dark”, I said, “I’m not doing another night lap.” I peeled off my wet clothes and fell onto my bunk as Roland politely pointed out that my attitude was rather wimpy.
Later we all agreed that it’s almost impossible to fall
asleep when you close your eyes and see trail rushing toward you and your feet
are still pedaling. I managed to doze
off, briefly waking up when Owen came in to wake Roland at around
“Ryan’s done”, he said, “so you ride next.” Significantly, Roland, a living energizer bunny, added “Take your time, I don’t want to do another lap”. I couldn’t believe my ears, but I got dressed and limped to the starting area. Blessedly, it was already light. “Hey this is gonna be easy!”
It wasn’t. My legs
objected to every slight uphill but I got through my third lap in around
By the time Owen woke up and finished his third turn, Roland got his wish and didn’t have time for a fourth. In the end we’d done 11 laps. The other unicycle team had done 8, primarily because they elected to get an entire night’s sleep. The consensus amongst the unicyclists was that a 14K lap is pretty long and that for a uni-only 24-hour event, 8K or 10K laps might be a better distance.
The bikers at this race were constantly positive towards us,
always cheering us on and never once humming circus music. At the award ceremony, both uni teams got
honorably mentioned and well-applauded.
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