Pre-race Test Ride

Today I took a few hours vacation from work and rode at Whiting. My goal was to ride a fairly strong, but not overly strenuous ride. I wanted to test my recently irritated knees and the unicycle I put together for the race. My new muni friend Dustin joined me, but we rode separately.  Since he's at the beginning of his muni career he can't yet keep up with me.

I'll be using my 29er with my non-geared rim since it's a single-speed race. I bought a Schwalbe Hans Dampf 29x2.35 Pacestar tire, which is a lightweight tire that works very well for muni. I also moved my lighter weight Spirit cranks, Wellgo pedals, brakes, and saddle from my 24" muni to the 29er. Lighter is better, I want to have brakes in case there are any serious downhills, and the saddle is just easier to move than messing with the brake lever mounting hardware under it.

It rode very nicely.  It's nice and light.

My knees started out feeling fine. I raised my saddle a bit along the ride several times to improved my leg extension.  I also noticed my toes tend point a bit outward, and more on my right side, so I consciously tried to straighten them a bit.

By about my 5th mile my right knee started to irritate me.  Again it was just a general soreness and I don't think there was any one area I'd point to.  But it was enough for me to decide not to ride much longer.  By that time I was in Webster Park on my way back to Whiting.  I happened to find Dustin and we rode maybe a mile more, heading back to the parking lot.

Once I got home I iced my knee and later did some stretching.  I ended up with a feeling a lot like back when I had an IT band problem in the fall of 2011. Nearly four months later Dr. Luckey ended up fixing that, so I'm going to see if I can drop in tomorrow with the hope for a quick fix.  Otherwise it's going to be tough to make it through 25 miles on Sunday.

Dustin's riding is getting better and better. He noted his need to improve his endurance.  The combination of being understandably inefficient, using new muscles, and his self-proclaimed being out of shape makes muni challenging for him.

Muni at Whiting and Webster Park - 2013-04-25