Last week Rapid City hosted the National American Unicycling Championships and Convention and about 300 riders showed up to take part in the festivities. Many of the Rapid City locals specialize in mountain unicycling or ‘muni’ for short. From the Rapid City Journal article:
“One of the main reasons why we were able to get the competition is because of M Hill,” said Hayford. “It is centrally located and has some of the best trails in the U.S. right in our backyard, and a lot of locals don’t even know that.”
Hayford and Semple both said that muni is safer than mountain biking.
“On a unicycle you have more control and you won’t be going as fast,” said Semple. “And it’s easier to ditch a unicycle if you are going to wreck.”
Local unicyclists frequent M Hill to practice for the upcoming muni events.
“We like to go to M Hill quite a bit because you are never going to really master it,” said Sydney. “There are some parts that you can never really ride so you always have to find the best path. It’s awesome and so we do a lot more mountain unicycling and trial stuff than other teams; they do a lot more artistic. We aren’t really in to that.”
Ahem – less dangerous than mountain biking? I have a hard to believing that but I agree a muni would be easier to ditch, assuming your feet aren’t clipped to the pedals. Mudhunny and I once saw a muni rider tackling the summer slopes at Telluride and I broke into a sweat just watching the guy. Wow.
Photo credit: unicycle.com
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