It takes a special kind of human to even want to try an Everesting, let alone attempt one, so when someone then decides to crank it up a notch by completing an Everesting on a unicycle, there are questions to be had.
Mason Allen, a 19-year-old University of Virginia student and mountain bike racer, is only the second person to complete a unicycle Everesting, and is also now the new world record holder.
He completed 130 laps of the chosen hill on his university campus (which is maybe also a world-first?) in an elapsed time of 21 hours and 9 minutes to achieve the required 8,848 metres of elevation, the height of Mount Everest.
Allen takes the record off of Austria’s Ben Soja, who was the first person to complete a unicycle Everesting in Los Angeles, California, in 2018, with a time of 23 hours, three minutes and 17 seconds.
Naturally, we had to find out more from Mason. Firstly, whether he was ok after such a challenge. And secondly, whether he was sound of mind to even attempt something like this in the first place.
Jonny Long: Our first question is easy. Why? Why do an Everesting on a unicycle?
Mason Allen: I have been mulling over the idea of an Everesting for a few years now. I used to compete regularly in marathon and ultra-endurance mountain bike races, so Everesting always was on the bucket list.
It was after seeing Ben Soja’s completion about a year ago that I started to seriously consider doing it on a unicycle, especially since I thought I could beat his time. The big catalyst for doing it now was that the U.S. collegiate mountain bike season got upended by Hurricane Helene, which resulted in collegiate mountain bike nationals being delayed and thus ending my mountain bike season. That’s when I still wanted to have a big season-ending event and ended up on this.
JL: Talk us through those 18 hours, how did the effort/challenge change over time? Were there any particularly hard, easy, fun or interesting moments?
MA: Note it was about 21 hours, as elapsed time is always used in these sorts of efforts. The first half went smoothly. Stopping time was kept to a minimum and I ended up two hours ahead of record pace at the halfway point. After that my pace slowed due to my descending ability worsening and more stops. For going downhill, my unicycle is fixed [gear], so I have to be holding the brake for the entire downhill, which required a lot of mental focus that started to slip later on.
For the stops, eventually I started to have longer and more frequent stops in order to provide brief relief and to ice my ankles and knees.
As for interesting moments, I did the Everesting on a hill on University of Virginia’s campus directly adjacent to a set of dormitories and during ‘Halloweekend,’ so it was interesting to see college students returning to partying when I started, heading back out in the middle, and coming back again before the finish.
Around 12-13 hours in, a bunch of members of the community: my family, UVA Cycling Club, and various local cyclists and friends showed up to either support me for a couple laps or until I finished in the dark.
I forgot to put on fresh brake pads before the start, so there was a mechanical pit stop to swap brake pads midway performed by a friend.
JL: How long have you been riding a unicycle? What specific training did you do for this effort? Did some of this training also involve just riding a normal bike or is practising on a unicycle key?
MA: I first learned how to ride a unicycle at a basic level in 2018 but got my first (and only) ‘serious’ unicycle in 2020.
I tend to ride it in the off-season intermittently as my main focus is biking. For the Everesting, I was basically coming entirely off residual bike fitness from actively mountain bike racing until four weeks before the attempt. After that, I rode the unicycle/bicycle about two times a week to prep, so not a lot of unicycle specific training.
JL: Do you know of any else who’s done something like this before? Do you think your time will ever be beaten? What advice would you give to someone trying to replicate what you’ve done?
MA: Ben Soja did this in 2018 and was the sole finisher before me. Outside Magazine has an article on it I believe. He did it in 23 hours, which was the mark I was trying to beat.
A key difference between our attempts too was that he had a Schlumpf hub unicycle, which allows the use of gears while I had a more typical non-geared unicycle. Specifically, I had a 26” mountain unicycle (muni). Regarding the fragility of the record, I think it is very beatable and certainly not optimised. However, I honestly don’t know how long it will be until somebody is crazy enough to do this again. There’s a reason I’m only the second person to do this. Advice is basically the same as any ultra-endurance event: it is a competition of who can stop the least and eat the most.
JL: What’s next for you? Where does one go from here in life after they’ve done an Everesting on a unicycle?
MA: I’m taking a few weeks off of bikes and unicycles. After that, it will be gearing back up for the mountain bike season for me, as mountain bike is still where most of my aspirations are as of now.
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