* Speaking of clipless pedals. I am into unicycling racing (believe it or
* not they have competitions for this) and this last spring my sister (also
* a unicycle racer) and I came up with the theory that clipless pedals
* on a unicycle will make the rider more stable, starts would be faster and
* maximum speed should be higher. Well after a little talk we decided to
* put our actions to words and we went out and clipless pedals. We also
* bought all the pads we could think of, helmet, wristgards, hefty knee pads,
* and elbow pads. The clipless pedals we bought had tension adjustments on
* them. We had them set so we could get out of them easily.
*
* When we first tried it out, and relearned how to get off and on the unicycle,
* we found that it was great! We started going on distance rides and found
* out how easy hills were with clipless. At this time we only had minor
* crashes, mostly when we were trying to get off the unicycle and forgot
* we were 'locked' in. When we fell trying to get off and on we were going
* slow so we didn't get hurt.
*
* We started to train with them in the obstacle course (go around cones
* in a predefined pattern) and found cornering was easier. Here we both
* had some nasty wipeouts but the only thing that got hurt was our pads and
* our ego (I forgot a couple of times that I was cliped when dismounting in and
* did some spectaclar belly flops).
*
* After a couple of weeks of telling everybody how great clipless pedals
* were my sister had the big crash. At 6 in the morning we were practicing
* the 100 m dash, (an all out sprint on the uni, we get up to about 180 rpm)
* and just before the finish line she fell and bounced on the track. When
* I came running up to her she was still 'locked' in. She ended up breaking
* her pinky finger.
*
*After her accident I fell kinda bad practicing the one foot race, after that I
* couldn't get up the nerve to ride fast with clipless pedals. My pedals
* didn't go waste although, I used them for bike touring (which I'm
* sure was there intended purpose in the first place).
__________________________________________________________________________
Andy Cotter cotter.cae.wisc.edu
Vice President of Unicycling Society of America