Oh, Shit
Tags: Cycling

It’s gonna get raw in this piece.

To an outside observer (perhaps yourself), cycling appears to roughly fall into two camps: rough and rowdy mountain bikers and shaven legged (across all gender identities), somewhat effeminate, folks in pseudo-superhero outfits. The former may seem boorish and the latter may seem, well, a bit punctilious, peevish, prim, and prissy.

Road Cyclist One: “Oh a bee flew into my helmet!”

Road Cyclist Two: “Get it out, get it out!”

Stereotypes are easy and, surprise, completely inaccurate. In fact, at least when you’re the kind of cyclist who spends ten hours or more a week on “all the kinds” of bikes, it’s all quite dirty.

Things you learn to deal with as a cyclist:

Other human’s spit

Other human’s mucus

Dirty hands and nowhere to wash them satisfactorily (grease, human contamination)

Bugs flying into your throat

Dirt in your teeth

Dirt in your food

Your own spit/mucus/whatnot decorating your kit (jersey, bibs, et cetera)

Droplets of your own piss

Blood

Shit

Oh yes, this is really the story of how, after over two decades of being a cycling enthusiast, I shit my pants.

If you’re a bicycle bigot, my Rodeo Labs Flaanimal is either a lightweight, but terrible rigid mountain bike or a portly, but resilient road bike. Or it’s a rad bike that reminds me of riding as a teenager and can handle any road, trail, or party.

Step back in time, to the halcyon date of May 5th, 2019 (yesterday, as I type this). The crew from Rodeo Labs and I had decided to attend the annual Cinco de Grindo, an informal “all the roads” (tarmac, dirt, 4x4 roads, a pinch of singletrack) celebrating Mexican culture (sort of), despite the fact that we all know that “Cinco de Mayo” has never been much of a holiday in Mexico (victory over the French in a battle, in a war they lost) and the real holiday of import is “Grito de Delores”, which is on the 16th of September.

It’s a fun event, though is it culturally insensitive? Not my pig, not my farm.

I have/had (depending on when you read this) signed up for another crack at the Dirty Kanza 200 (though I keep telling myself doing it once and finishing is really satisfactory, so why bother) and have only cracked the century mark (e.g. 100 miles) a handful of times, thus far this year. Given that the DK200 (the informal name for the Dirty Kanza 200) will probably take me between 13 and 16 hours to complete, I need some serious time in the saddle. And I only have/had a few weeks.

To that end, we met up at the REI flagship store at 5:30 am on May 5th, 2019, with the goal(s) of:

Riding to Boulder (~31 miles or so)

Participating in Cinco de Grindo (~60–70 miles)

Riding back to Denver (same as going)

All told, this would be in the neighborhood of 120 miles or so, which is to say good training for DK. The Flaanimal, with its 650x47 mm knobby tires, is a chore to ride at road race speeds so it encourages a “work hard, but not too hard” sort of attitude that one needs to survive 200 miles of rough Kansas farm road.

After arriving in Boulder, we swung into the Whole Foods on Pearl St to grab some breakfast (it was around 7:30 or so).

This is the point in the story wherein a hackneyed author of fiction would insert a “Little did he know…” tidbit to foreshadow what was to come. I won’t do that, though I kind of just did.

After a rather harried (time had slipped by much faster than anticipated) breakfast under a cloudy gray sky, we made haste to Kettle and Spoke brewery (the start of the Grindo) and fell into pre-adventure banter with many of our friends. For what it’s worth, the route (even the quarter of it I did) was fantastic, everyone was friendly, the games at each checkpoint were fun, et cetera, et cetera.

Before I go further, consider the words of Greg LeMond (AKA “Le Man”), the greatest American cyclist:

“It never gets easier, you just get faster.”

Now that you’ve been introduced, Mr LeMond has one of the most famous shit stories in cycling, involving the 1986 Tour de France. Here’s an excerpt:

Up the outside the four-man train continued, the three worker bees escorting their stricken leader back to the front, where, as one of the favorites, LeMond needed to be. But at least one rider, sitting towards the rear of the peloton, saw the brown liquid streaking the insides of the American’s legs, running into his shoes. It was a bad peach, LeMond reckoned. After eating it, his stomach reacted violently. He turned to a teammate: “Pass me your hat.”

For the curious: that piece is part of the first chapter of the book, Slaying the Badger, which was also adapted into a 30 for 30 film by ESPN. It’s used as an analogy regarding the notion that Bernard Hinault shit all over LeMond (he was supposed to be helping him, but seemed to be threatening him), but LeMond had actually done it first… poop jokes, folks.

Back to the events of Cinco de Grindo 2019…

The details of the ride and the experiences of riding it are never terribly interesting to describe in prose. Was it beautiful? Yes. Did climbing the final 16% grade pitches of “Super Flag” hurt? Always. Was it rewarding to bomb down through fields of Aspens, bunnyhopping rocks and turning my bars in the air like a child? Absolutely. Can I relate that in a terse fashion that moves the narrative along? Hell no.

I felt normal, strong even, as we approached the wonderful and rocky 68 J road. It’s the prefect road for my perverted “hard alt road” bike and I should have been quite enthused.

I was not.

Not my photo, but yeah that’s 68 J

My stomach had begun acting a wee bit peculiar. What began as minor discomfort soon developed into belches accompanied by that terrible, acid meets vegetable soup and orange juice taste of vomit. That’s when I knew something was awry.

One of my compatriots from Rodeo also had a similar problem (for the sake of privacy, I’ll call him “S Thompson”… no, that’s too obvious. “Sheldon T.”)

We decided to forgo the rest of the Grindo, head back to the Rapha Boulder Clubhouse, rally over Topo Chicos and head back to Denver.

A plan, as they say, is a list of things that don’t happen.

After a descent down Magnolia and Boulder Canyon, we procured our fizzy drinks at the clubhouse and I had the first hint of something more than just some belching. Let’s just say with immediacy and conviction, I ran into the wonderfully clean water closet at Rapha, peeled off my jersey, and deposited what looked like (apologies for the graphic description) an unshaken bottle of cold pressed “Kale, Apple, Ginger, Romaine, Spinach…” juice into the receptacle.

Food or waste? I kid. I love pressed juice.

After the use of far too many squares of toilet roll, I felt much better. The old axiom “better out than in” led me to feel some sense of relief. It was over.

So with a lightened load, we left Boulder and began making our way back towards Denver.

For those familiar with the route, one of the least enjoyable bits of the climb is the slog up to McCaslin road on the 36th bike path. It’s not really a long climb, it’s just hot (white concrete everywhere that does naught but reflect the sun) and if you’ve, say, already been on a bike for nearly 80 miles with around 7k of climbing, it’s annoying to have weekend warriors decide to “kick your shaved-leg ass” up. So we abstained from that route and cut over via dirt (“yay!”) to Marshall Road.

It was somewhere between Marshall Road and the small town of Superior, CO that it happened.

I couldn’t stop it.

I will spare you the graphic details, but needless to say I knew that another round of “cold pressed juice” was now hanging around in my chamois.

A note for the uninitiated: “chamois” refers to the pad in cycling (preferably) bib shorts. The name actually refers to leather from an animal, which is what they were made out of until the 80s. Now they’re made of cuts of foam. Clutch for reducing friction between your nether regions and a saddle. I’ve heard the more “traditional”, mildly boorish, weekend MTB types even call it “a diaper.” A fitting description for this tale.

We made haste to the nearest gas station.

I had another session of “meditation” and carefully rinsed out my bibs (fully naked in a one person only truck stop bathroom) over the toilet (using a water bottle I would not be drinking from again that ride). Again, it was “juice” so the cleanup wasn’t as gnarly as it could have been.

Sheldon gamely hung out outside, where I met up with him after procuring the only diarrhea medicine available at the shop (Pepto Bismol), which also didn’t have ginger ale (which I know isn’t scientifically proven to help an “upset” stomach, but the placebo works on me).

The remaining details of the day are unimportant. I made it back to the Cap Hill neighborhood, immediately cleaned up things and chugged as much water as I could stand.

What have we learned, at this point?

Cycling can be rugged . If you don’t think cyclists are tough, you try doing cardio for 20 hours a week and dealing with shit like… well, shit.

. If you don’t think cyclists are tough, you try doing cardio for 20 hours a week and dealing with shit like… well, shit. Poop is funny.

According to some, the aesthetic of Rodeo Labs is wrong. We’re basically riding either “bad mountain bikes” or “bad road bikes.” I say that’s foolish bullshit posturing. If riding from the densest part of a decently sized city to the top of remote, rugged mountain roads, shitting your bib shorts, and living to tell about it is wrong, well… warts and all, I don’t want to be right.

“The Wrong Way” . E’ry day.

Never forget:

Addendum: Sheldon T, I mean, “S Thompson” did not shit himself. That was solely the milieu of the author. But really, if you’re gonna be up for adventure, that means you might end up with some poop in your pants. Rugged is rugged.