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Comment by nicoburns | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't necessarily put that much pressure on your groin once you get the hang of it. You can rise up a bit, and it eases that. It's definitely exhausting though. I made the mistake of trying to keep up with a group on bikes once. It was only a mile and a half, but even so it was almost impossible to keep up. Not being able to freewheel is a big resstriction.

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Sitting bolt upright on a conventional bike consumes a lot more energy than being on the drops. It's one of a handful of topics to bring up when a newbie starts talking about how they can't keep up because they're not in shape. Yes, that is true, and we also have much better technique than you do, which we can work on right now, if you like...

Somehow this guy got aerobars to work on a unicycle, which they don't talk about. I had to stop and search for an image to see how the hell those work.

They're taking a load off his core and letting him use many more muscle groups.

My son kept up with a bike group on trails for 30 miles.

To do that you should have a 36" wheel. An alternative is a geared unicycle, but those are expensive and rare. Choose crank arm length as needed to make the pedaling most effective. Resulting speed might be 30 MPH peak, or 20 MPH sustained.

There's a big difference between a 20-inch unicycle and eg a 24-inch. At Google we even had one that was probably 30 inch or more.

Though still, keeping up with cyclists is going to be a problem. Joggers and other runners are the group to keep up with. And they don't have a freewheel either.

I doubt you'd be able to keep up with a fixie either though. I believe the core issue is the energy required to balance front-to-back.

I've done quite a bit of unicycling. The better your balance, the less energy is required for balance. I think for a skilled unicyclist the difference in pace compared to being on a fixie would be slight.

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