I rode the Lobster…(some thoughts from Dustin Kelm)

I was 10 when I recieved my first unicycle for Christmas. It was a 20 inch Schwinn. I never imagined that in my lifetime there would be the unicycle race of all unicycle races and that I would ride in it: “Ride The Lobster” 500 miles across the province of Nova Scotia Canada. Many thanks go out to Unicycle.com and all who worked tirelessly (or with one tire) to make RTL possible. It was an incredible experience for me to a part of this historical event. Let me tell you about it…
A week before the race I started having second thoughts and wondered if I would even be able to finish. I was so nervous the weekend before I was getting sick in ways I won’t describe here.

Monday…It was awesome riding through Yarmouth following a police escort with 104 other riders mostly on big wheels. Cars stopped, people cheered, we rode through red lights. It was quite the sight. We started racing thinking we would transition riders every 10-20 miles. My first ride was 21 miles and that would be the longest single ride for me all week. At the end of the day on Monday I thought to myself “What in the world have I gotten myself into? By the end of the week I’m not going to ride a Nimbus 36er (big wheeled unicycle) ever again, I might not even want to ride a unicycle again for as long as I live.” I was sick, sore and tired.

Tuesday…the stage was 15 miles longer than Monday and half of it was in the rain. When it was raining people would sit in their cars at the end of the driveway and cheer us on. When it wasn’t raining they would be standing by the roadside. School kids screamed and cheered as we raced by (I’d be cheering too if I got out of class to watch 35 unicyclists from around the world go cruising by). People rang bells, banged on drums and tambourines, played bagpipes, honked horns, clapped and yelled. Dogs barked and cows mooed. This is what our reception was like from Nova Scotia almost every day of the race. It really kept us going. Thank you Nova Scotians!

Wednesday…The Individual Time: Each rider on his own terms against the clock. Riders are released 30 seconds apart based on team rank from last to first. My personal goal was to not get passed. Only one rider passed me near the end of the 13 mile run. I didn’t feel too bad about this at the end of the day because he was the overall winner of the time trial and he was riding a geared 36er. The Criterium: My time in the ITT from the morning was fast enough the get me into group 1 with the fastest riders in RTL. This was kind of scary for me because the “Crit” is pretty much made for sprinters and I’m not much of a sprinter in this 36th year of my life. The people of Truro cheered us on and I tried not to lose too much time.

Thursday…another long day of riding. It was a little wet in the morning but it turned out pretty nice by the end of the day. It’s all kind of blur now. I’m pretty sure that Nova Scotia is a really beautiful place, but racing through it on a unicycle isn’t the best way to take in the scenery. Most of my time on the wheel is spent scanning the pavement for cracks, ruts, rocks, dips, holes, road kill, and the next orange “RTL” and arrow telling us which way to go. By the end of Thursday I was pretty tired, but the legs had loosened up and my impression of the race has shifted drastically from what I thought was going to be hell on wheel to actually being a lot of fun.

Friday…LAST DAY! And thankfully the shortest day. Despite feeling pretty good, we’re still pretty tired. The course took us to one of the northernmost regions of Nova Scotia. Towards the end of the day we also faced the largest/longest climb of the entire week, 4.5 miles uphill. My teamate Scott was a climbing machine. Other teams switched riders every mile up the Mt. but Scott rode the entire thing! (Scott was the oldest rider in RTL and he did something those young whippersnappers didn’t even dare to try). At the top of the Mt. I took the GPS and got to ride downhill as fast as I dared for over 5 miles. I got to race the last transition of the day and about half a mile from the finish line my Team Unicycle.com teammates Josh and Scott joined me and we rode across the finish line together.

It’s over. We’re done and we made without any major falls and with no injuries on our team. I did Ride The Lobster and I would do it again. I’ll give the 36er a little rest, but it’s not going to the trash bin like I thought it might. I’m actually more jazzed about distance riding now than I was on Monday.