another newbie

I started just before I turned 50. It will take a while for your leg
muscles to get used to the unicycle. Keep your weight on the saddle and
check to be sure your saddle is high enough. A quick rule of thumb for
saddle height adjustment. With your butt planted firmly on the saddle
and your pedals @ the 6 and 12 o'clock position, your heel should just
contact the lower pedal with your leg fully extended. If the saddle
seems too high after this procedure, lower it about 10mm and that should
get you pretty close to the correct hieght for learning.

--
Krashin'Kenny - Crash Tested

If you ain't crashing, you ain't going fast enough!!!!!!!!!!!

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Draino3

I'm 41 and started about two months ago when I gave up smoking. My 8
year old son started at the same time. I can now do a few hundred yards
at a time and he is looking forward to doing his first 50m this weekend
(he did 20m last weekend).

I'm certainly no expert, however for what it is worth, I'd suggest the
following:

1. Probably lose the poles. What we did was to get up on our unicycles
by a post or wall and then just go for it. We'd do five pedals, then
six, then seven and so on.

2. Find a good place to practice. We go down early mornings at the
weekends to a local beach with a flask of tea and ride the promenade.
Not too many people around!

3. Practice often. Again we try to do at least 20 minutes a day, in the
back garden (not great because it is small) or in the house (not great
because it upsets my wife).

4. Find a local juggling or unicycling group. We found a great one in
Edinburgh where we can just practice in a hall or outside with lots of
other people practicing too. It is huge fun.

5. Leg pain is an issue for me too. I get 500m and have to stop because
they hurt too much. Roger at Unicycle.uk.com tells me this is putting
too much weight on my pedals. All the weight should be on the saddle.
Difficult to do though!

I hope you're enjoying it as much as we are and good luck with it all!

David McCluskey
Edinburgh, UK

--
FatDave - Newbie
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Hi Draino3 -

I'm no expert either. I'm 37 & have been riding unassisted for about a
month. I get the tired legs also, and think it's a combination of not
having enough of my weight on the seat and not having enough
'conditioning' so the corrections I'm making are very tiring. Here are
my suggestions:

1) Agree with losing the poles. Suggest launching yourself off a
stationary object for now, until you can freemount.

2) Learn to freemount as soon as possible - opens up whole new worlds!
Somewhere there's a link to some tutorials on how to do this (both text
and video) - hope someone else will post it, or you can search for it.

3) When riding consciously remind yourself to put your weight on the
seat. You will tend to put weight on the pedals particularly when making
a correction. Sit back down on the seat after each one.

I want to be able to ride around my neighborhood. THis involves making
some 90 deg turns. That's what I'm working on these days, along with
continuing to practice freemounting & riding in general.

Have fun, keep practicing. Isn't it crazy how addictive this is?

zuni.

--
zuni
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Indeed there is a great link to the video and text on how to freemount
and idle and all sorts of new things. Just go here;
http://www.unicycle.2ya.com/ this is a truly a great site. The videos
are informative. I havent even touched a UNI, yet I know alot about
them. That will change soon. Have Fun!

-ParadoX

--
ParadoX

-"There is nothing to fear but fear its self."
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a suggestion fer all u old guys with the leg pains: run. i do about 5
miles a day, and have almost no trouble unicycling. just start at about
half a mile a day, and work your way up to about two miles, and you
should be fine. IMPORTANT: no pain, no gain. you'll probably be sore for
a week or so after you start, but trust me, it's worth it.

--
gasmaster - level 4 unicyclist

OBEY THE MULLET!!! BWA-HAHAHA!!!
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Re legs tired and in pain: that is mainly because your legs fight each
other in the process of maintaining balance. Tip one (very important):
put more weight on seat, so that you will strain your legs less. Tip
two is to wait (not the sit-on-the-couch type of waiting though) as
this will go away with more experience.

Oh, and I learned four years ago when I was 47.

Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
--
"The more you think, the less you have to do. - Leo Vandewoestijne"