Try riding one mile on a unicycle. How about two? Five? 10? All of those seem impossible. Even if you somehow managed to ride 10 miles on a unicycle, could you ride 149 miles on a unicycle with three other people as part of a relay race? In the snow?
It seems impossible, but earlier this month, four men unicycled 149 miles (240 kilometers) from Haines Junction, Yukon to Haines, Alaska. The four men were the only team of more than 1,300 to complete the journey during the Kluane Chilkat International Bike Relay. Granted, not all 1,300 were riding unicycles; some were riding normal bikes.
According to Vancouver, B.C. newspaper The Province, Nathan Hoover and his squad maybe shouldn’t have finished the race either. For the first time in the 25-year history of the event, it was officially shut down due to a blizzard that caused snow and rain to fall along the course.
“What else were we going to do that day, right?” said the 58-year-old Hoover. “It was ridiculous… On my first leg, I was riding along and it wasn’t too bad … and then suddenly I came around the corner and there’s just this wall of wind.”
But the wall of wind didn’t stop Hoover and his team. Hoover is a fantastic unicycler and has gone to the world championships every other year since 2000. On top of that, one year he biked an 800-kilometer race the length of Nova Scotia.
That’s a length of about 497 miles.
While Hoover and his team managed to finish, others didn’t even have a chance to get back on the road after the race was shut down. On the Friday night of the race, some participants were camped out at Haines Junction and woke up to find themselves in heavy snow with some tents having collapsed.
“This was totally shocking,” biker Jason LaChappelle said.
Even when the snow had slowed, black ice coated most of the roads, making it very dangerous for bikers.
Despite the black ice, Hoover and his three teammates were already far down the track. Granted, they had a bit of a head start. The foursome started the relay earlier than most at 4:22 a.m. because unicycles aren’t as fast as road bikes.
On top of their head start, Hoover said because their unicycles have thicker tires, it might have made it easier for them to have traction while riding.
“It did look impossible when we woke up. I mean really impossible. But it wasn’t. It was actually quite doable,” he said.
After 14.5 hours, Hoover’s team cruised into Haines to finish the race.
