Mountain Unicycling

Posted by Alex in Sports on July 27, 2008 at 4:08 pm


Unicycling - a sport long relegated to clowns and weirdos - have gone hardcore: a small but growing cadre of unicyclists have "ruggidized" (is that a word? It is now!) the whimsical device and created the new sport of Mountain Unicycling or Muni.

Instead of blazing down a trail at top speed, a muni rider often moves a few feet at a time, pedaling hard, rolling and hopping from rock to trail, finding the “line,” or the ideal path down the trail.

Riders will often cover the same ground repeatedly, seeking to perfect their lines.

“Muni is a sport for minimalists and problem solvers — people that don’t mind working over and over at something until they succeed,” Holm wrote. “A trail that would be boring on a bike can be totally enthralling on a muni.”

All of which makes mountain unicycling a nearly contemplative exercise.

“Mountain bikers do it for adrenaline,” Aharoni said. “This is a more focused, technical sport. The amount of concentration it takes is akin to meditation.”

David Gelles of the New York Times has more: Link - via Metafilter




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COMMENT

10 comments to "Mountain Unicycling"

  1. bean
    July 27th, 2008 at 4:16 pm

    If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was lifted from The Onion.

  2. dbsmall
    July 27th, 2008 at 5:16 pm

    My alma mater has a large unicycling contingent. (It’s Harvey Mudd College, and I never did the unicycling thing).

    Back in the ’90s, I went for a bike ride with an old friend, and he was very excited about his Mt. Unicycling hobby…

    …which tells me that this really is an engineer’s sport, rather than an adrenaline-junkie’s sport (despite appearances otherwise)

  3. MUni nut
    July 27th, 2008 at 5:53 pm

    MUni is awesome!! Once you get rid of the “training wheel”, you’ll never go back.

  4. TwoDragons
    July 27th, 2008 at 6:31 pm

    I can’t help but wonder what the repercussions of hitting a large bump would be…

    Yeowch.

    –TwoDragons

  5. Ali S.
    July 27th, 2008 at 6:48 pm

    I have a friend who does this kind of thing. I wonder if he has lost all feeling in his lower extremities or he has a stronger threshold for pain.

  6. Johnny Cat
    July 27th, 2008 at 8:08 pm

    I have actually wondered when this would happen, the unicycle is comin back in a great way.

  7. the truth
    July 27th, 2008 at 8:31 pm

    Ever heard of Kris Holm? These parts are from New World Disorder 1 and 2. About 8 years old now.

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=2hZzYg9YlMo

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=1uPznTbus3g

    http://www.freeride-entertainment.com

  8. Christophe
    July 27th, 2008 at 8:44 pm

    Those guys have balls.

    …Or, do they?

  9. pr
    July 27th, 2008 at 9:43 pm

    Well, it won’t stop being for clowns.

  10. ted
    July 27th, 2008 at 11:20 pm

    Next they’ll have those tiny clown cars fitted out for rugged terrain.


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