Just learning to unicycle and got to the stage I can do almost 100m on my 20″ Lidl special – now I just need to work out corners (and starting without holding onto something). The thing is, it feels like my legs are whirring round and that seems like a limitation, I was wondering if it would actually be easier at this point to have a bigger wheel – or doesn’t it work like that?

I’m sure there are some uni experts round here who can advise (and give me some tips on what next – presumably it’s mainly just “ride more”).

“Just ride more” I’m afraid is most of it. A bigger wheel will obviously help you go faster without having to pedal quite so fast, but any size wheel will feel undergeared compared with bikes. If you want to ride off-road much you’ll do better with a 24″-29″ wheel, depending on your preference for technical or xc riding, but I wouldn’t worry about that for now. Just keep riding your 20″ until you can ride around confidently and mount. Then get something that suits your riding taste better (most of us end up with a few different wheel sizes and types anyway).

Have a look at the unicycing forums if you haven’t already. The international one at http://www.unicyclist.com and the UK one at http://www.unicycle.org.uk/forum

Good luck 🙂

Thanks for that – followed those links and found some useful stuff. Getting lots of practice in this weekend – have trebled my max distance so far. Does it ever get to the point you can relax though?

Interesting unicycle thread that does make mention of wheel sizes

aracer – Does it ever get to the point you can relax though?

yes – and you should be getting close to it. I got to the point I could just ride around on my 20″ unicycle in a fairly relaxed manner.

Does it ever get to the point you can relax though

Yes it will – then you can ride almost indefinitely, just like on a bike. You get to the point where balance corrections become subconscious and tiny, so you’re not wasting so much energy balancing and using more of it to actually move along.

Concentrate on putting your weight on the seat rather than the pedals; that’ll make your knees ache less and generally make everything more relaxing.

However good you get at it though tiny wheels are still very limiting for going very fast; I feel like my knees are flailing around madly in a very inefficient manner above a gentle pootle. Bigger wheels and shorter cranks are good for making more relaxing progress once you’ve got the hang of it.

Cool, thanks for the advice. Busy practising lots (family’s away), and thanks to advice on a thread I found on one of those forums I can now freemount (about half the time) – something I wasn’t even expecting to try and learn for a while!

Legs still whirring round though.

god loves unicyclists.. fact

it is a good feeling when you relax ,

to begin with your all tense and constantly correcting then you just click and suddenly its like riding your bike !

i have a 24inch, i found it much harder than the 20inch i was riding in our shop at the time , i used to be able to sell those at christmas no bother just by riding it round the shop thus prooving that it could be ridden !

i bought my own 24 as i wanted to ride further and off road. 24 i found much harder to ride but eventually got it – was like learning again for me 🙁

your legs still whizz round just as fast but you are moving faster and it hurts more when you fall 😀