Last Monday, I showed a video, shot from my helmetcam, of a group ride at Little Creek. The centerpiece (i.e., the moment I showed four times 24 seconds into the piece) of the video was when The Runner crashed, whacking her buttbone (a technical term) good and hard into a sharp protruding rock.
To add injury to another injury, I also showed The Runner’s second fall, as the after-blackout-easteregg at the very end of the video. I don’t show that fall four times, because, frankly, I didn’t get a very good shot of it.
What I don’t show at all in the video is what happened after The Runner fell. Either time. That’s because after the first fall, The Runner hops around, runs in place, and swears a lot.
If it had been a guy — Rick Sunderlage (not his real name), for example — it would have been kind of comical (especially to the tune of the Mary Tyler Moore Show) — and I would have run the post-injury footage for sure. Since it was my wife, I decided against it.
A double standard? You bet.
After the second fall, I didn’t run the footage because The Runner was just laying there — face down — for a few minutes, coping with the the massive amount of pain she was experiencing.
(Photo by Brad M)
She had hit her hands so hard she thought they were broken, and one of her knees took a very deep cut.
The thing is, we had a surprising amount of medical expertise on-hand after these crashes. Heather’s a doctor; The Runner is a nurse. Unfortunately, however, it was the nurse who was hurt, and the doctor’s expertise is in cancer research.
And as for me, well, the video reveals that apart from untangling The Runner from her bike, I’m quite useless. Mostly, I just ask her, over and over, whether she’s OK and if there’s anything I can do. Which, I think it should be pointed out, actually does serve a purpose: after I asked these questions often enough it became so irritating that it distracted The Runner from the pain of her injuries.
How to Behave
Since then, I have had time to ponder: what, exactly, should I have done while I waited for The Runner’s pain to subside?
As a cyclist who sometimes rides with a female cyclist, I realize that how one acts may depend on who one is with, and have therefore helpfully segregated my findings into appropriate gender combinations.
If you are a male cyclist with an injured female cyclist
Refrain from telling her how hot she looks in lycra. Now is not the time. Trust me.
Tell her how tough and awesome she is. By the way, she is very tough, and very awesome. Just in case you weren’t clear on that.
Tell her anyone else would be crying harder / acting more pathetic than she is, including you. But don’t use the words “acting more pathetic,” because that implies she’s being pathetic at all, which she is not.
Get her bike ready to ride again. The woman is going to want you to shut up at some point. This is a good time for you to fiddle with her bike and make sure it’s good to go.
Volunteer to make a tourniquet / bandage out of your jersey. But not until she’s on her feet and seems like she might appreciate your sense of humor again.
Describe the events leading up to the injury. Be expansive and generous with the difficulty of the triggering obstacle and / or event. She didn’t endo when she hit a rock. It was a big ol’ honkin’ ledge, and she darn near cleared it anyway. I’m not exactly sure why we all start telling the story as soon as the event happened, but it seems to help, and it seems to help more if you get started with the exaggeration right away.
If you are a male cyclist with an injured male cyclist
Ask if he’s alright. Depending on how old you are and where you live, you should either end the sentence with “dude,” “man,” or “bro.” It makes the question affectionate and concerned-sounding without being too affectionate and concerned-sounding.
Lean his bike against a tree. He won’t trust any tweaks, fixes, or adjustments you make anyway.
Wait for 30 seconds before asking if he’s ready to ride. If he says he needs another minute, wait another thirty seconds and ask again. Repeat as necessary.
Describe the event, but feel free to trivialize certain aspects (such as the prime cause of the event) and enhance other aspects (such as the high-pitched scream the victim made upon suffering a compound fracture).
If you are a female cyclist with an injured male cyclist
Tell him how hot he looks in lycra. For guys, there’s no bad time to hear this, and even when we’re injured there’s a small part of us that’s wondering if our guts are sufficiently sucked in.
Otherwise let us suffer quietly. We’re trying to be manly and stoic. If you begin to describe the event, we’re going to think it sounds silly, because you’re not exaggerating our manliness sufficiently. If you call the injury on our leg a “nasty little scrape,” you’re making it that much harder to refer to it as a five-inch-long gushing gash when we recount it later.
Don’t touch our bikes. Unless we beg you to help us unclip.
If you are a female cyclist with an injured female cyclist
Honestly I have no idea. Do whatever it is you women do when you’re with each other. Like, talk about how much you miss us men. That’s what you do when we’re not around, right?
Now, I’m sure some of you are thinking, “Well, how about administering a little first aid?” But that would assume I know what I’m doing and would not be making the problem worse. For example, in my panic, I might have been likely to give The Runner rattlesnake poison antidote, which probably wouldn’t have helped very much.
A Back-in-Stock Note from Fatty: The 2010 Fat Cyclist T-Shirts have been out of stock for a while — but they aren’t anymore. Out of stock, I mean. What I am trying to say is that Fat Cyclist T-Shirts, which were out of stock, are in stock. They are stocked. If you want one, you can buy one — or more, for that matter — and Twin Six will send it to you. From their stock.
And hey, could someone please do me a favor and tell me how many teeth that cog has? Because that looks like a really big gear.
It’s common cycling wisdom that if you are going to be riding for less than a couple hours, you just need to bring a couple bottles of water — no food.
If you’re going to be out for longer than that, you should bring your favorite sports drink. If you’re going to be out for more than three hours, you should bring food. Most importantly, if you’re going to be out for four or more hours, that food should include a can of Vienna Sausages.
I’m just kidding of course. You shouldn’t wait that long to break open the Vienna Sausages.
A Match Made in Hell
But you know what bothers me? What bothers me is that my two favorite things — eating and biking — go so poorly together. I mean, I love food. When I’m not eating, I’m thinking about eating. And after I’ve eaten, I evaluate what I’ve just eaten, often considering how I might enhance a similar experience in the future (hint: it usually involves more salt or mayonnaise).
But I don’t enjoy eating when I ride.
Consider this for a moment. In order for me to remember to eat when I’m on a long ride, I’ve set up an alert on my Garmin 500 to go off every half hour.
Yes, that’s right: I’ve set up an artificial device to make me eat. I promise you that no such device is necessary in other parts of my life.
Which is too bad, really.
The Part of Lists (Or Actually, Just One List)
There are, of course, very good reasons why my life’s central preoccupation is suddenly so unappetizing (Oh boy, a pun!) when I’m on a bike.
I shall list them.
Sweet sweetness: I bet I’m the first person to ever notice that most every energy gel, bar, gummy chewy, and drink is sweet. And generally, I’m OK with sweet. For a while. But after six hours of washing down a sweet gel with a sweet drink, I’m ready for something less…sweet. And trying to disguise the sweetness with flavors doesn’t work. As an experiment, try this: eat (I don’t think that’s the right word) nothing but Gu for six hours, swapping out different flavors. After that six hours has passed, eat (slurp? consume?) another Gu without taking a look at the package. Ask yourself if you know what flavor it is. Take my word for it: you won’t be able to tell. I know, I know: carbohydrates are fuel, sugar is a carbohydrate, and so sugar is an effective fuel. But you know, bread’s a carbohydrate, too, and it’s not sweet. I would like a buttered toast-flavored energy bar.
Stuff sticking in teeth: Energy gels and bars are specially designed to get trapped in your mouth. Energy bars with little pieces of nuts are the worst offenders, because those nuts get lodged between teeth, between teeth and gums, and in your molars. And once it’s there, no amount of swishing will get it out. Nor will hours and hours of probing with your tongue, during which time you will stop noticing anything about your ride, because you are obsessed completely with getting that stupid piece of peanut out of your teeth. And it’s not like you can pick it out with a fingernail, because you’re wearing gloves. This will become distracting to the point that you will either go insane or make an emergency call to your dentist.
The weird coating on your teeth: You’re riding. You’re eating gels and energy bars. You’re drinking energy drinks. And after a while, your teeth feel almost exactly the same as they would if you had never brushed them even once in your life. This phenomenon is known, technically, as “disgusting.” I have, at times, nearly wept with joy when I could finally have a post-ride tooth brushing. OK, not “nearly.”
Texture: Think of your favorite food. Now think of your second, third, fourth, and fifth favorite foods. Do any of them have the texture of an extra-resilient gummy bear, or of an extremely gritty bar of soap? No? Gee, I wonder why not?
Breathing: When, someday, I make a list of all my superpowers, “being able to breathe during an aerobic effort” will not be on that list. However, “having extremely tiny, to the point of being basically useless, nasal passages: might be on that list. Which is not a very great superpower to have, by the way. My point is, if I’m riding, my mouth is open. And if I’m eating, that’s a problem for two reasons. First, it’s super gross-looking. Second, the food falls out as I chew it, producing a hilarious “cookie monster” effect. Sadly, at this time I do not have a video of this to share.
Spitting: Certain energy food combinations do not play well with each other. Suppose, for example, you eat a particular energy bar and wash it down with a particular energy drink. They — to your suprise and horror — chemically bond in the same way that epoxy glue does, except the result is extra-colorful-and-thick mucus. Which is awesome to spit. At first.
Bad combos: Thick mucus is really a pretty mild form of bad energy food combinations. Other foods might chemically interact in very bubbly ways, but only once swallowed. And shaken. At which time, a very serious case of the loud stinky farts is the best outcome you can hope for. And I probably don’t need to explain that the worse outcomes are much, much worse. And not just for you.
I should, I think, point out a couple of very important energy food exceptions. The first is that a couple of the new Clif Bar flavors are really, really good. In particular, the White Chocolate Macadamia Nut bar is delicious enough that I recently caught The Runner eating one recreationally.
The other exception is what I think may be the most perfect on-bike energy food ever created: The Salted Nut Roll. They don’t melt or get squashed in your jersey. They aren’t just pure sweetness, thanks to the brilliantly complementary taste of the marshmallowy stuff (“nougat,” I believe they call it) and the peanuts. They’re carbs and protein. And you can find them in every convenience store I’ve ever been to.
And when — inevitably — half of it falls out of your mouth as you try to open-mouth-chew it, well, some squirrel out there is going to think that’s just awesome.
PS: Remember back when Fisher Bikes put up a special Fat Cyclist Edition of the Gary Fisher Superfly as one of the prizes for the “Help Fatty Ride with Team RadioShack” contest? And Roger L. won the bike? Well, it’s now finished, built, and delivered to Roger. And it’s so pretty I just had to show it off.
Behold the only FattyFly in the universe (click the image for a larger version):
A “Hi, I’m Back” Note from Fatty: I loved my Spring Break. I rode a lot, and I’ve got a lot of fun new stuff to talk about. That said, I’m — once again — working on very little sleep today, due to some pressing family stuff. So: today’s post won’t be as riotously hilarious as it might otherwise be. But if you’ll stick with it, you’ll find it does include a rather awesome new video I finished assembling last week.
There’s no reason in the world why cyclists should choose to be either strictly mountain bikers or road cyclists (or track cyclists, or cyclocrossers, or downhillers, or BMX-ers).
Don’t be one or the other. Be both.
Or all twelve. Or — to be more realistic — as many as you have money, time and inclination for. As near as I can tell, there are no bad forms of cycling.
That said, if there must be a debate about which, between road and mountain biking, is the more awesome, mountain bikers do have a compelling argument worth making (and please note that I’m saying “compelling,” not “conclusive” or “winning”):
When you’re mountain biking, you have the choice of ridingtechnicaltrail, or riding trail with greatflow.
For those not really familiar with these terms, “technical” trail is stuff with lots of obstacles and features that demand focus and attention. Roots. Tight turns. Ledges and drops. Trail with “flow,” on the other hand, tends to have terrain changes that happen more slowly, often with beautiful scenery that lets you get immersed in the ride.
Technical trail is intense, challenging you and leaving you exhausted and happy at the end of the ride. Flowing trail is more mellow and leaves you…exhausted and happy at the end of the ride.
And having that option — flow or technical — is magnificent.
The difference in kinds of mountain biking trails came to mind strongly the weekend before last when Lisa and I were in St. George. On one side of the road is Gooseberry, justifiably famous as one of the best technical trails in America.
On the other side of the road is Little Creek, which is far less famous than its neighbor, but is — in my opinion — every bit as fantastic of trail as Gooseberry.
Because Little Creek has incredible flow. It’s a good-sized loop with a number of beautiful add-on detour trails. All with incredible views, winding singletrack and rolling sandstone.
I think Lisa, Kenny, Heather, Bob (not this one), Brad (not this one), and Dwight would all agree: you’d be hard-pressed to pick a better place to kick off your mountain biking season.
We rode for five hours — all five of which I recorded on helmetcam. For your convenience, however, I have condensed it into the following three minute video.
Seriously, there’s no good argument to not be both a mountain and road cyclist. And if you are a pure roadie, I’d like to suggest that a flowing trail like Little Creek makes an excellent case for checking out a bike with fat tires.
After work today, The Runner and I are headed to Saint George. We are going there to road bike and mountain bike a lot, and even to run a little bit.
Mostly, though, we are going there because we are sick of wearing tights.
The Anti-Tights Manifesto
It has been a long, cold winter, and I am sick of it (including the fact that it snowed here most of yesterday and continues to flurry today).
Sure, I’ve actually gotten out on my bike quite a bit, but only because I have been willing to layer up. Shorts. Wool base layer. Long sleeve jersey. Jacket. Beanie. Thinsulate gloves under heavy gloves. Wool socks. Neoprene shoe covers.
And, of course, tights.
How I have grown to hate wearing tights.
Oh, I know I shouldn’t. I should be grateful for tights, and the way they make it possible for me to go out riding even when it’s ridiculously cold out. And the truth is, a good modern pair of tights — like my Bontrager RL Windfronts (full disclosure: I paid retail for these at a local bike shop — no blog-related hijynx here) — allow me to even be reasonably comfortable.
But I still hate wearing tights.
Oh, I’m fine with them at the beginning of the winter. I even like the feeling that I’m somehow cheating the winter.
But as the winter drags on, the tights come to represent the defeat of one of the things I love the very most about road cycling: the feeling of flight.
If you love road riding, you know what I mean.
When you’re wearing nothing but shorts, a jersey, and low-cut socks, riding a road bike feels as close to flying as you can while still being on the ground. You’re incredibly light. Your clothes are so thin and close-fitting that they may as well not be there. You feel the wind on your arms, face and legs (one of the top three reasons to shave your legs, by the way).
With tights on, all of that’s gone. You’re warm, sure, but your isolated from the air around you. You’re riding, sure, but every turn of the cranks is just a little more binding, a little less free, than it is in the Summer.
And while the weight gain that comes with tights (and everything else, but I choose to pick on tights) is honestly not all that much, it’s enough. You feel heavier. Sluggish.
It’s better than not being on a bike at all. But if I were to create a spectrum with riding rollers at one end and riding in shorts, no socks, and a sleeveless jersey at the other, riding in tights would be distressingly close to riding the rollers.
So, by this time of the year, if it’s even remotely close to warm enough, I leave the tights off for the ride. Even though my legs immediately feel the painful bite of the wind, I’m glad to feel that bite.
How to Control the Weather
As I believe I’ve mentioned, we’re headed to St. George for the weekend. Through some magic of Utah-ness, this three hour drive practically guarantees a 15-degree-warmer climate.
And I have not packed tights. Nor has The Runner.
We are absolutely committed to a weekend of sun. Of riding in shorts. Sans tights.
It’s April. Time for some warm days.
Tights are not an option.
PS: Next week is Spring Break for my kids. I’m going to take a break from this blog for that week too, to spend more time with them, as well as to hopefully finish a blog-related project I’ve been working on for months. I’ll be back April 12.
The first is no surprise to anyone who’s been following my blog for a good long time: my blog is five years old today. Which means that — at an average of four posts per week, each an average of two typewritten pages long, I have now written approximately 2080 pages for this blog.
Even when you factor in the fact that only 4% of it is any good, that’s still 83 pages of stuff worth reading.
Which, I guess, is not all that much good stuff to write over the course of four years.
Suddenly, I’m finding myself wishing I hadn’t done that particular bit of math.
Luckily for me, there are some other people who haven’t done that math either, because they probably would have reconsidered and then I wouldn’t be able to reveal my second big piece of news, which I — for contractual reasons that will shortly become clear — am going to simply reprint in its entirety below:
Competitor Group Announces Acquisition of FatCyclist.com Includes Rights to Back Catalog, Future Content
The Competitor Group (CGI), the leading media and event company in the endurance sports industry, today announced the acquisition of FatCyclist.com, expanding and solidifying its cycling and triathalon coverage into the rapidly emerging and hotly competitive “online sport satire” arena.
Mitch Thrower, New Media Officer for The Competitor Group, said, “We are pleased today to bring Elden “Fatty” Nelson on board to our increasingly rich and diverse publishing properties. With his large repository of existing content and the moderate likelihood that he will continue — occasionally at least — to write something of at least mediocre entertainment value about cycling or triathalons, we figured we’d better scoop him up before Bicycling magazine did.”
Nelson — or “Fatty” as he likes to call himself in order to give a patina of likeability to what would otherwise be a fairly unlikeable person — will primarily retain the duties he has already given himself — e.g., write his blog, with some posts being re-published in the online versions of VeloNews and Triathalete Magazine.
There will be some differences, however.
“First, we will be un-revealing Fatty’s name,” said Thrower. “With the recent revelation of the name of another cycling blogger nobody had previously heard of, we think it would be wise if we can get everyone to forget the name of the author of FatCyclist.com. To that purpose, we have a group of editors currently scrubbing his site of his name and image, replacing them with circumlocutory remarks and photos of Elvis during his fat years.”
“After everyone’s forgotten who Nelson is — in a couple weeks, we estimate — we’ll shock the world by revealing that Fatty is actually Elden Nelson. And thousands of people will be excited to know that someone they’ve never heard of is in fact someone they’ve never heard of.”
“This will be somehow meaningful,” said Thrower.
The scrubbing of Nelson’s identity, however, will not be the only change to the blog.
“We’re adding a new tagline to Nelson’s blog,” asserted Thrower. “Something like, ‘He’s like BikeSnobNYC, but he’s from Utah!’ Or maybe ‘He’s like BikeSnobNYC, but we promise he won’t say anything our advertisers don’t want him to!’ Our agency creatives are still working on it.”
“Have you seen those drawings he does of crazy ranting cyclists where their jerseys fit so tight that their bellies show?” continued Thrower. “Those crack me up!”
Nelson’s duties will also be expanded into occasional non-fatcyclist.com publishing events. When, for example, Lennard Zinn takes his once-every-seven-years vacation, Nelson will assume his responsibilities.
“Zinn has done a fantastic job of singlehandedly writing the entirety of VeloNews for the past two years,” said Thrower. “Sadly, he has slept an average of 0.001 hours per night during this period, and is beginning to hallucinate badly. We believe that Nelson, as one of three people in the world capable of turning out an entire magazine’s-worth of content in a month, can take his place.”
“We fully anticipate a serious drop in the quality of our technical content, but we figure that if we only do this once every seven years or so people will forgive us. Plus we’ll extend the useful life of Lennard Zinn by an estimated fourteen years.”
As a member of CGI, FatCyclist.com will have access to its deep editorial resources, and will benefit accordingly. Readers will have access to up-to-the-minute race results for both road cycling and their favorite triathalon events. There will also be many, many pictures of bicycles. And of professional cyclists riding bicycles.
All of these pictures will be taken by Graham Watson, who has not slept once in the last nine years.
Finally, Nelson will have the responsibility of writing all new April Fools posts for VeloNews. “We’re very serious cycling journalists, and it’s not easy for us to be funny,” said Thrower. Just check out our pathetic offerings for today. A bike touring site? ASO bought by Disneyland? Contador having a repetitive stress injury due to doing that fingerbang thing all the time? We’re pretty sure Nelson can do better than that,” said Thrower. “And besides, Bike Snob turned us down.”
When reached for comment, Patrick O’Grady said, “Bluster bluster cantankerous blustery outrage,” predictably.
About The Competitor Group
Competitor Group, Inc. (CGI), headquartered in San Diego, CA, is the leading media and event entertainment company dedicated to the endurance sports industry of running, cycling and triathlons. CGI is comprised of the following brands: Competitor Publishing, Elite Racing, Inside Triathlon, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon Series, Triathlete Magazine, VeloNews and VeloPress. CGI owns and operates 25 national events delivering more than 250,000 professional and amateur participants in 2009. CGI publishes four magazine titles with a combined monthly circulation of approximately 650,000 and plans to launch an endurance community web presence under competitor.com in Q2 2009. Further information about Competitor and its media properties can be found at www.competitor.com.
I can hardly wait to start my new life as a CGI-branded blogger!
A Back-in-Stock Note from Fatty: The 2010 Fat Cyclist T-Shirts have been out of stock for a while — but they aren’t anymore. Out of stock, I mean. What I am trying to say is that Fat Cyclist T-Shirts, which were out of stock, are in stock. They are stocked. If you want one, you can buy one — or more, for that matter — and Twin Six will send it to you. From their stock.
