 |
| It's okay to laugh. He expects it. |
Having your loving wife laugh at you when you put on your
clothes is one of the special joys of being a road cyclist. There is something
about them that can be off-putting to people outside the sport. It could be the
skin tight fabric. It could be the pad used to protect cyclists’ bottoms called
the chamois (pronounced “shammy”) that looks like a slightly loaded diaper. Or
it could be the general size mismatch between cyclists’ legs (generally
largish) and their upper bodies (generally twig-like).
The end result is a caricature of a human, a cartoon
rendering of an athlete. It’s an end-of-childhood moment when you realize that
donning spandex does not make you appear like the super heroes from Saturday
morning cartoons of old. With this loss of innocence ringing in your ears, I
would like to take a moment to tell you about bicycle shorts.
 |
| Bib shorts and dignity are mutually exclusive |
Bicycle shorts are skin tight to avoid bunching and
chaffing. In general, most people are opposed to bunching and chafing. The
opposition to them increases the closer to your nethers they occur. Since
bicycle shorts cover the entirety of our nethers (and if they do not, you are
not wearing them properly), the tightness is welcome despite its visual side
effects.
The chamois, that little pad inside the bicycle shorts,
is also functional. It is not a diaper and one should avoid trying to use it as
a diaper. Because that’s gross. It serves the very special function of padding
your bottom during long rides. It would be easy to assume that more padding on
the seat would solve this problem, which it does, but it causes a larger one.
Thick seats squish padding into places that don’t like having things squished
into them. After hours on the bike, there can be nerve related side effects that
are… distressing. I find, having written “distressing,” that the word does not
capture the scope of terror and horror that one feels when experiencing nerve
related side effects in unnamed places. This is a family blog so I will not go
into further detail.
 |
| If you can see the chamois, your shorts are on inside out |
There are two main styles of bicycle shorts: bib shorts
and just-plain-shorts. The latter are exactly what you’d expect. They are
essentially yoga pants turned into shorts (yoga shorts should be a thing) with
a mini-diaper sewn in. To make sure they don’t slide down, they are fitted with
an elastic waistband engineered to be just below the threshold where they would
cut your torso from your legs. This provides most people with an elegant and
delightful muffin top.
The former, bib shorts, are similar but rather than an
elastic band around the waist, the bib shorts have straps that extend over your
shoulders. This has many advantages. It does not crush your waist and make you
feel like you constantly have to pee. It also makes it very difficult to use
the restroom as removing the shorts means you need to remove your top, although
that’s probably more of a disadvantage now that I think about it. But the
biggest advantage of bib shorts is that they do not need that torso crushing
waistband. Rather than give you that aforementioned elegant and delightful
muffin top, they squish all your midsection squishables into a dignified barrel
shape. Given the choice of barrel or muffin, I choose barrel.
So there you have it. Cycling shorts are padded yoga
pants that squish you into curious and wondrous shapes for the amusement of
your spouse and, to a lesser extent, to allow you to ride free from physical
pain. This freedom from physical pain allows you to savor the psychological
pain that is inseparable from the sport of road cycling.
The more you know.
Comments