gstrain

I learned to unicycle in my Sophmore year in college. It took me 3 days practicing about 1.5 hours a day. At that point I could ride straight for probably a couple hundred yards and turn a bit (but I couldn’t mount without holding onto something). I learned by just repeatedly mounting holding onto a trashcan on each side and going for it over and over again.

Learning to idle took me much longer.

It took me about 6 months to go from starting work on 5 balls (I could already do 4), to being able to do it for 100 throws within a couple of tries. I was practicing it an average of probably at least 30 minutes a day, 5-6 days a week.

I’ve set a goal for myself of going sub-20 this year. In mid-April I ran a 24:15, and my most recent time was a 22:18 on the track a week and a half ago. I’m 40 now, and the last time I was in sub-20 shape was probably when I was about 24 or so. When I was 30 I’d gotten back down around 20:15-20:30 pace, but then took a lot of time off until last year.

I’m spending some serious time on my training now and think if I can just stick with a solid base of 25-30 mpw with swimming and biking cross-training of about another 20 equivalent miles a week, I’ll get down sub-20 in 3-4 months. We’ll see.

Update: On 8/1 I improved my 5K time to 21:12, so moving the right direction. Unfortunately I’ve started to have to travel a lot with work and picked up a cold, so we’ll see if I can keep improving quickly and break 20 this year. Stay tuned.