Now, I’m going to be frank here. I live on the Ride 100/Olympic route and every single damn weekend, you see hoards of Mamils (Middle-Aged-Men-In-Lycra) on their four-grand bikes and eight-man pelotons, clad in Rafa grimacing their way to and from the Surrey Hills.
Despite being in my forties, I was determined not to be like ‘that lot’. So at first, cotton t-shirts, cargo shorts and adventure sandals were my kit. I was wearing a second-hand helmet from the bike seller and had bought a second-hand rack to bungee my rucksack to.
I was off.
But here’s the thing – there’s a reason why people riding more than 10 miles generally wear lycra – it’s very good at regulating heat.
And with lycra came a term that in my cotton rugby jersey playing days we had never heard off – wicking.
No it’s not about making baskets, wicking takes moisture, or sweat as we used to say in the day, away from the body so you don’t sit there in your own damp like I was doing with a cotton T.
To be honest, I hadn’t got round to buying a top but Aldi had a cycling special – I’ll talk about these in another post – so my mother in law got me some lycra shorts and a top.
Now wicking works when it is close to the body so I levered my way into the gear. Sod the muscles that would soon be complaining, my body shrieked at being squeezed into such a tight compartment - was it possible to be claustrophobic in clothes?
Now, those of you that cycle – be honest. We all hope that after we put on the lycra, we all look like superheroes, racing gods, kings of the track and rulers of the road…
The reality can be somewhat different.
All your bulges and bumps, bear bellies and chins are all to see…
There is no hiding place at all.
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