Shaving my Legs...

The burn isn’t the only embarrassing thing about my legs. They are also hairy.

In certain cycling circles, having hairy legs is intolerable. It’s the cycling equivalent of having spinach caught between your teeth. Pros like Wiggo and Cavendish shave their legs for a variety of – mostly legitimate - reasons,

1)        Because of Aerodynamics. I’m not convinced on this one, but maybe over a 25 mile time trial it might save a second or two.

2)        Because they get massaged after training and racing and smooth hair-free legs are easier to work on than hairy ones.

3)         Because when they fall off their bikes, the resulting cuts and grazes are easier to clean up without hairs getting in the abrasion and encouraging infection.

4)         Because they think it looks better.


Amateurs shave their legs for only one reason;

-          Because they want to look like pros.

So naturally, I’ve shaved my legs. 

Past tense you’ll notice. I did it about 10 years ago, yet whenever it is mentioned (and it comes up surprisingly often) it always provides plenty of sniggering amusement, not least from my wife.  But before I recall the sorry circumstances of my depilation, let me set out the arguments in my defence.

Back then, I used to do a bit of bike racing. I used to compete. Not very successfully, you must appreciate. In fact in six years of racing my total prize money amounted to £4.50. I was what the word mediocre was invented for. In fact, my racing was so monumentally mediocre my only ambition at the start of every race was not to come last.

But for a few years, I’d head off to Spain for a pre-season cycle training camp, hopeful that this would be the year my fortunes changed. ‘Camp’ was perhaps a good word in this context, because almost all the blokes there– some 50/60 – had their legs shaved. The first year I turned up au naturale, I felt like a chimp on a bike; specifically the PG Tips drinking Tour-de-France riding chimp from those now politically incorrect adverts of the 1970s.

With my hairy legs the seemingly the lone pair among a forest of shaved (and in some cases shamelessly oiled) legs I felt judged and scorned. I felt amateur, I felt hirsute. Next year, I told myself, the hair would have to go.

Ladies reading this will be aware of the limited options involved here, all of which involve varying degrees of discomfort or indignity.

Waxing my legs was never going to happen – not while I still had breath in me anyway. The prospect of ripping out hair from follicles that had for the last few decades been happily buried in my legs was not even to be contemplated. My mind was definitively made up after reading travel writer Tim Moore’s account of trying this method, which he described as, “no more painful than the last time I pulled off a pair of flaming Elastoplast trousers”.

So waxing was out.

What about shaving? After all, it’s not as if I’m unfamiliar with a razor, having been clean-shaven all my life. But where to start on a pair of hairy male legs?

For Cath, with legs shaved for a lifetime, it’s an easy task of gently running a razor up and down her shins. But for me, with fecund legs, sprouting hairs like a tropical rainforest, any razor applied to my virgin shins was going to find itself choking to death pretty quickly.

Maybe the trick was to kick-off with a pair of industrial clippers to get the worst of the thatch out of the way, before tidying up with a beard trimmer….and getting that final billiard ball finish the old-fashioned way with razor and shaving foam. But this all felt a little too agricultural to me; more like harvesting crops than removing body hair. In any case, with this option there was the very real prospect of missing bits. Could there be a greater humiliation than having a line of missed hair running down the back of my legs like a seamed stocking, where thanks to a combination of ineptitude and inflexibility I had missed a stretch.  It didn’t bear thinking about.

What about Laser treatment. Oh come on….

So that left the cream option. Back then, before being bizarrely rebranded Veet, the hair removal cream of choice was known as Imaac.

I’d had only passing acquaintance with the stuff, which in a male world more usually featured on rugby tours, where it is liberally applied to the eyebrows of sleeping teammates, leaving them with the sort of constantly surprised look you associate with lego people.

Cath had Imaac (which was a good start), but not in the industrial qualities I was clearly going to need. My legs were, after all, a greenfield site; there was a lot to clear here…not just a little bit of pruning to do. Unable to face the excruciating prospect of buying Imaac myself, I sent Cath to Boots. On her return, I retired to the bathroom, closed the door and then, thinking better of it, I locked it. 

I’m about to get naked here so If you wish to skip to the next blog entry, I quite understand.

Perching on the side of the bath, I unscrewed the cap and squirted some of the foul-smelling stuff out. The tube comes with a dinky plastic pastel-coloured tool, not unlike a feminine brick-layers trowel. And with this wholly inadequate device I started ladling the stuff on.

There is an added frisson of tension in this operation, as the goo must stay on the legs long enough to do its nefarious work, but leave it too long and it take on agent orange- like qualities, apparently melting the skin. Or something.  So the clock was ticking.

It was only as I was spreading the stuff on my legs that the key question hit me. How far to go?

Just above the knee perhaps? Well that would be OK when wearing cycling shorts; I’d have the hair-free look I was seeking, but when naked I’d look as if I was wearing a pair of mohair Bermuda shorts.
 But if I went higher, then how high?

If I crept up to mid-thigh I’d run the risk of having a band of hair showing below my swimming shorts if I went for a dip – which I fully intended to do.  I’d look like a kind of Neapolitan ice-cream from the waist down.

But I’d also booked a sports massage during the training camp (another pathetic attempt to make myself feel like a pro). If I only depilated to mid-thigh, the poor masseur would literally have one hand in a sea of hair, the other one on freshly-mowed skin.

So, was it a case of going right up to groin level?

(This would be getting a little too close for comfort and again, whenever I got naked, I’d look like I was wearing a pair of hairy budgie-smugglers….)

But the decision had to made and made quickly. The stuff was already on my legs and the clock was ticking. Prevaricate too long in weighing up the options and I’d have melted my legs anyway.

In the end I went for the last option – ‘all the way’; in for a penny in for a pound.  So I covered myself in stinking cream and sat there, white legged…red faced… (hearing the occasional muffled snicker from outside the bathroom door) … waiting for a whole bunch of chemicals to do their evil thing.

Rinsing it off was a bit of a shock.  The legs holding me up were no longer mine. Below me were a pair of (if I may say it myself) rather shapely hair-free legs. I tentatively ran a hand down them. Nice. I was beginning to worry now – was I starting to fancy my own legs?

That night, as I lay in bed with Cath, she was appalled. (I’m not sure there is a more appropriate word). “It’s like I’m in bed with another woman” she said when I cuddled up to her.  I didn’t want to say anything, but her legs were a bit stubbly, mine were lovely and smooth…..

The next day I flew to the training camp. No one commented on my legs. But more importantly, no one commented on my hairy legs….either.  I felt part of the club. I had arrived. In a cycling sense,  I belonged.  I even imagined I went that little bit faster.

And that, I thought, would be that. I’d let the hair grow back after the camp and all would be well. Cath would start talking to me again and I’d be able to sit around the pool in the summer without causing undue alarm or widespread hilarity.

Except that something unexpected and altogether unwelcome started to happen.

A week or two later, large, unsightly, red wheals began to emerge on my legs. Slowly, continent-shaped blotches began to wrap themselves around my calves and thighs. They turned from to a light pink to an angry red. They were not going away.  In fact they were growing like those cells that you see on microscope plates, dividing, and multiplying again and again …. growing like some chilling sci-fi virus that would slowly eat its victim alive; the sort of contagion that Dr Who might have to deal with.

I clearly had to go to the doctor.  (My GP, not the Time Lord). 
But this was a slightly awkward one.

The first hurdle wasn’t too bad. When I rang for an appointment, I was asked what the problem was. ”Rash”, I replied. Easy.

But face to face with the doctor, whose wife knows my wife…I had to come clean.

“So, what seems to be the problem” he said. Keeping my trousers on I took a deep breath. On the way to the surgery I’d been weighing up the various forms of words available to me, desperately searching for a combination that didn’t make me sound too odd. I soon realised that no such combination of words existed. There was no way around this ….so I just ploughed on.

“I immaced my legs….. and….well….. this happened”, I said, pulling up my trouser leg.

“You immaced your legs”, he replied slowly and carefully, just to be sure he’s heard me correctly.
“Yes”, I said in a small voice…”You know, like….errmm ….professional cyclists and swimmers do”.

He raised a singular eyebrow and made no further comment.

The treatment was – God bless the NHS – 10 weeks of sunbed treatment. Each week, I’d head off to hospital for a few warming minutes under the sunbed lamps.  It was glorious. It was warm and relaxing. The paper pants I was required to wear were a sartorial low point, but other than having to explain to a few nurses why I needed the sunbed treatment in the first place…(The line, ‘I immaced my legs never ceased to raise a smirk) it was wonderful.

Granted, I soon began to look like a daytime TV host, turning a slightly unlikely shade of orange, but the wheals left me, the hair grew back and I was once more, my old self.

Rest assured, I shall be cycling to John O’Groats with legs as hairy as the good Lord intended.

1st degree burns....

Bikes can be dangerous things.

I’ve fallen off them before of course; sometimes quite spectacularly. (Cycling ‘hands-free’ is an old trick. But cycling hands and legs free, as I ambitiously tried at the age of 12, can only end in disaster. I do not recommend it).

I’ve picked up aches and pains from bikes, unspeakable saddle sores and the occasional blister. I’ve even fallen off the saddle and landed astride the unforgiving, unyielding and unhelpfully placed crossbar which will not be forgotten for a few decades.  Bikes can be cruel like that.

But I’ve never been burnt by a bike before. In fact I wasn’t even sure it was possible. But I can now confirm that unfortunately it is.

Keen to get some tarmac under the wheels of the new bike, I took it for a gentle spin around the block. But my ‘block’ has a rather steep hill in it. As I flew down said hill, (thanks to gravity and a lifetime interest in beer and cheese – not though my own efforts) I instinctively stuck the brakes on.

Now the brakes on the new bike are disc brakes (bear with me, I’m not going to get all technical on you) but suffice to say, they are alleged to have the stopping power of a brick wall. One minute you’re doing 40mph, the next moment you feather the brakes and you’re nearly airborne over your handlebars…or something like that. (The manufactures sell it a little better).

But stopping is good. Especially when on a fully laden bike; as I will be once the trip gets underway. And in the rain, as I will be once the trip gets underway.

Well, the discs did their job. The bike and I came to a pretty sharp halt and I was still on the saddle; all good so far. But being the tedious tinkerer that I am, I want to fuss over the handlebars…so I got off the bike and placed the front wheel between my knees to steady the bike so I could get to work on whatever it was that was bothering me.  

Now some of you will be ahead of me and will know that disc brakes get very hot. The first time I cottoned on was when my calf started melting…as I branded myself on the newly-heated white hot disc. Leaping away and squealing like a prepubescent girl I looked down to see the remarkably precise imprint of the circular disc slowly smoking on my legs…the hair singed away and the skin turning first white, then pink, then red.  There was the faintest aroma of Sunday lunch.

It’s the kind of mistake you only make once.

If you can’t quite picture how a bike can burn you, I’ve snapped it for you . And you'll see how perfectly the disc brake on the right, matches the scar in the left hand picture....

It has now started to scab over…but it is now like a little crop circle.... like my own little cycling tattoo.  Hurty !

The bicycle stork

My new bike, carefully selected for the rigours of the JohnO’Groats trip, has arrived. This makes me very happy.

The more cynical among you might venture to suggest that I probably organised the entire two-week ride simply to justify splashing out on a new bike – and you might be right, because while it might not be about the bike for Lance Armstrong, it certainly is for me.

I’m not alone. There is even a mathematical formula which can be universally applied to attainment of happiness for acquisitive cyclists;B=N+1. (Let B denote bikes and N the quantity of bikes currently owned, then ergo, B=N+1).

In fact, there's no limit to the amount of time I will happily spend talking about bikes. And because I don’t tend to talk to myself(too often) you can deduce that there are plenty of other people who willingly share my obsession.

Hours can (and have been) spent discussing bikes we’ve had, bikes we’d like; lusting after bikes and deriding bikes.

And it’s not even whole bikes. Bits of bikes merit lengthy debate and weighty discussions; gears, cranks, saddles, pedals, bottom brackets, wheels; nothing is too obscure, too tedious to discuss. I’ve even had reasonably animated exchanges over handlebar tape.

Then there is the (usually solo) pursuit of pouring over ‘bike porn’ magazines, in which individual bicycle components are artfully displayed and back lit, then carefully photographed like small works of objectd’art, in an attempt to justify their eye-watering price tag.

The high, not to sometimes say astronomical price of ‘kit’ is hardly commented on by ‘cycling folk’ as I was starkly reminded recently when a non-cycling friend came over for dinner. Slipping off to the toilet at some point, he returned in mood somewhere between outrage and incredulity. He’d been reading one of my cycle magazines, conveniently placed in the smallest room for those with time on their hands. ‘Pedals’ he almost yelped, “just pedals…..for over £200”

“I know, they’re lovely aren’t they, and they're,.... errmm, really light”, I weakly responded. He seemed unconvinced.

Some bike shops are aware of how matrimonially divisive high prices can be. And they have developed elaborate manipulation of receipts, which make the Libor jiggery-pokery look frankly tame. It is not unusual, as the till read-out pushes swiftly on to a three figure bill, for the quite offer to be made…. "Do you want to pay some of that in cash”. We all know what’s going on here. It’s not tax evasion. It’s spousal-grief evasion. So when the bill – with say, £50 lopped off - lands in the account, it looks a little more modest.

For some, even that is not a safe enough refuge. A retired gentleman I know, of quite senior years, who will remain nameless for his own safety, decided he deserved a brand new Bianchi road bike. These Italian beauties don’t come cheap and his long-suffering cycling-widow wife was shrewd enough and experienced enough to know it. So he used to leave his brand new bike under a snooker table at his local cycling club house.

Then, each time he went for a ride he would leave his house on his ‘old bike’, cycle to the clubhouse and with the connivance of his equally silver-haired club mates who’d slipped him a key, dump his old bike and take out his shiny new stead. On the way home, the process would be reversed.

Anyway, I digress. Back to my bike (which I’ll add was purchased with my wife’s full knowledge).

If you don’t care about bikes, you’ve done well to read this far and all you need to know is it’s grey.

If you do like bikes, then it is a Specialized Tri-Cross,aluminium frame with drop handlebars, a Shimano triple chain ring and Avid disc brakes. It’s also been a little pimped-up by the design team at Specialized, who clearly thought that its sober grey, anodised finish was just crying out for a little bling. So it is finished somewhat randomly with gold bits and bobs (not real gold obviously – that would be too heavy).

So it has gold effect skewers, gold effect braze-on bolts, a bit of gold on the headset and even under the seat pins.

The contrast of tasteful grey punctuated with flashes of gold leaves the bike looking like a smartly-dressed city boy in a Paul Smith suit, with a couple of gold crowns teeth, prominent medallion and a few sovs’ on his fingers.

Of course, it wouldn’t do just to ride it as it is. The good people at Specialized might have agonised over every last bolt and carefully selected each component. But no sooner was it out of the box than I was over it quicker than a greased weasel, replacing this, tinkering with that, swapping out the other.

Believe it or not, this is the comfy one !

First to go was the saddle. This is personal.
1,000 miles and an uncomfortable saddle; you do the maths(or the biology), but by my reckoning, on a brand new and unfamiliar (and let’s be honest not very attractive) saddle, I’d get no further than Barnstaple before if felt like someone had taken an electric sander to my perineum (those two words ‘electric sander’ and ‘perineum’ should never make an appearance in the same sentence, and for that I apologise).

The other outcome of sitting for hours on a merciless saddle is that the blood supply to your man-bits gets constricted. Numbness follows,which in itself isn’t too bad. But the moment you get off the bike, you suddenly develop pins and needles in a part of the anatomy which really shouldn’thave to entertain such indignity.

I’m sure you’ve all done it before; fallen asleep on an arm overnight and then woke up to find it floppy and useless. While you amusingly pick it up and drop it again, the blood slowly starts to flow back, causing a rather peculiar feeling closely associated to unpleasant. For some reason, this sensation always makes me giggle….Now, imagine (if you have the anatomical hinterland to do so) such a thing happening to the old fella. Trust me, it’s no giggling matter.

It does at the very least leave you walking very oddly for a few minutes; and I find the usual remedy, rubbing the affected area to get the blood flowing again, is rather frowned upon in public.

So to avoid all these groin-related shenanigans, I added the saddle from my ‘best bike’ (see the blue and white one above), a saddle my posterior is fairly well acquainted with. Granted, it’s not exactly a leather armchair in the comfort stakes…but it is not the cruel slice of plastic which came which the bike.

And on a 1,000 mile ride, I'll take any little but of comfort I can.

Turning away good money

When I started putting the word around that I was thinking of doing LEJOG (the acronym shorthand for Land's End to John O'Groats) I got three pretty regular reactions. 

1) Really ?
Said in a tone of voice that always sounded a little too close to scornful for my liking.

2) Why ?  
Which was not unreasonable but for which I tended to have two answers; 'why not' or 'because I'm clearly having a mid-life crisis'...depending upon my mood and who I was talking to.

3) What charity are you riding it for ?
On the logical basis that no one would do it just for fun.

I have to say that rather selfishly, I'd just fancied having a go. But the Charity question was raised so often I started to think that perhaps I'd been a little too-self centred. People were literally trying to thrust money into my hand for whatever good cause I wanted to nominate, and there I was, turning them down. As a result, they often looked baffled or hurt. Or both.

Maybe, subliminally, I didn't want the extra pressure. After all, if it went pear-shaped, I could quietly slip off and few people would be any the wiser. 

A cycling advert, rather than an advert for cycling 

So I had a think about it and came up with Kangaroos. Not the bouncing, boxing, Ozzie-emblem,  pouched-up, Skippy-type Kangaroos ... but a small Charity based in Mid-Sussex that does great work for mentally and physically disabled kids and young adults. 

One of those kids is my nephew George. He has been dealt a pretty tough hand in life as he was born with something called Angelmans Syndrome. Rather than explain the details here, google it. Suffice to say, it is tough for him and his family.

Kangaroos provides George and other kids and yound adults with leisure activities, after school clubs, holiday clubs, short breaks and respite care for families. They provide the sort of fun activities that are rarely available for those with special needs.

So now however tough it might by for me (saddle sores, rain, stiff knees, sunburn, headwinds, rain, men in white vans, vicious dogs, rain, punctures, getting lost, rain, dreaming of clean clothes and no doubt crying like a big girls blouse and wishing I'd kept my mouth shut and never mentioned John O'Groats) I have an added motivation to man-up.

As you can see from the picture, I've got some jersey's made up with the Kangaroos logo and the stated ambtion of Lands End to John O'Groats on the back - so that when I am inevitably hooted at by passing cars, I can kid myself they are hooting in support and not about to side-swipe me into a ditch. 

If you'd like to make a donation, please go to my Just Giving site. Or if you see me out on the road, I'll happily take cash !

http://www.justgiving.com/mickslatter

Who's Sorry Now.....

A man well out of his depth

Those of you who have seen me on a bike can perhaps imagine the potential folly involved in my rather ill-conceived plan to ride from Lands End to John O'Groats next month.

I have always thought that going from one end of the country to the other has a simple, but rather noble appeal to it; a badge of cycling honour, a marker, something to bore the kids with when I get (even) older.

So one evening over a couple of beers (not, I grant you, the ideal basis for making important decisions) I gave public (and slightly slurred) voice  to my long-standing ambition. I mean, how hard could it be ?

Well, from Sunday 5th August I will find out. Over 13 days, along with my old mate Steve Morgan, I will attempt to ride 1,000 miles to the north-east tip of Scotland. And then, clock up a few more miles by going on to Kirkwall in Orkney.

(note the very deliberate use of the word attempt. More confident types wouldn't have even entertained the word because of all the associated, lack of back-bone, lilly-livered, hedging-your-bets uncertainty it implies....but given my current level of confidence, the word remains). 

I have been training (I use the phrase in the loosest possible sense) but frankly, I'm petrified. Petrified I won’t be able to finish (many don't). Petrified that I'll come to a pathetic, exhausted whimpering halt before I even leave Cornwall. Petrified about what two weeks on an unforgiving though highly-fashionable racing saddle can do to a man.

You can follow my inevitable travails in this blog.

In return, I promise to do my best to furnish you with photos, tales from the road, amusing anecdotes (particularly if they are at someone else’s expense) my general moans, musings and misdeeds...recommedned pub stops and for those of a medically curious disposition, detailed and self-pitying descriptions of the inevitable malfunctioning of the this middle aged body.

Enjoy the ride......(even if I don't)