I wonder

Normally you would just practice the events that are being
offered. This works well with track races, artistic
events, basketball and hockey. It's harder to do for
Trials and MUni, which are going to be very different from
year to year.

For Trials, probably the best thing you can do is build your
own obstacles and practice on them. Work on increasing your
jump height, gap width, and ability to ride skinnies, both
level and slanted.

For MUni, ride rough terrain, fast. Expect a cross country
race to be in the range of roughly 1.5 - 3 miles. See how
fast you can cover that distance on various trails.
Remember, dismounts will slow you down, so the highest
possible speed is not necessarily the answer.

For Uphill racing, practice riding up hills of various
length and steepness. We don't know what the course will be
yet. For last year's NAUCC, we didn't know until the day of
the event.

For Downhill, same thing. Course is unknown, and details
may change.

In addition, bug the organizers to provide course
information when it becomes available. I think they finally
have a location for this year, but I don't think the trails
will be worked out until the snow melts. Next year is an
even bigger question mark, as I don't know for sure if it
will be in Illinois (Unicycle Uni-Versity) or elsewhere.
Expect Illinois to be relatively flat. 😄

Plus, consider the political angle. MUni and Trials are
growing fast, but they are not *required* events at USA or
IUF competitions. This needs to change, or at least the list
of required events needs to be reduced to make time.
Everybody make a lot of noise about this so you get heard,
and a change in the rules gets addressed. MUni and Trials
are going to surpass track and artistic in numbers of
participants, if they haven't already.

--
johnfoss - Home of the Garage Page

John Foss, the Uni-Cyclone
"jfoss" at "unicycling.com"
www.unicycling.com

"Hey, could I have some of that spinach? I need to get this pork rind
taste out of my mouth." -- Ryan Atkins to Kris Holm, on the way back
from Moab after sampling some of my pork rinds. They grossed out the
whole van!
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