It’s funny to be sitting here on the living room floor as my girlfriend waxes my legs. I can honestly say that looking back five or six years, I never thought that I would be in this position. But at the same time, my life has been building steadily (or regressing rapidly) toward this moment ever since I first started bike racing more than ten years ago.
My first exposure to bike racing was in 1998, when I was literally thrown into a mountain bike race while attending summer camp. As an impressionable twelve-year-old kid, I quickly fell in love with the sport’s adrenaline surges. As much as I enjoyed my kid’s race on that first night, the real fun was watching the elite race. Those men and women flew around the course, flowing like water over rocks and roots, whipping their bikes down the singletrack and sprinting to the finish. Those muscular athletes were the first real bike racers that I ever saw. They all had shaved legs, which I thought looked very weird. The image was burned into my mind.
For several years, my bicycle racing was limited to a handful of mountain bike races during the summer. Then I went to college and with the idea of becoming fast and smooth like those men and women I’d seen at the bike races years ago, I joined the cycling team. Of course, it took a few years to become anywhere near as fast as they had been.
My first bike race in college was on a rainy March morning. Water soaked my clothes and clung to my hairy legs. But I was hooked. I kept racing throughout that year, taking flack from all quarters about my hairy legs. As much as I idolized those slick men and women from that first mountain bike race, I was still weirded out by the idea of shaving my legs, despite the fact that I now had friends on the cycling team who shaved on a regular basis.
They all cited various reasons. “It’s aerodynamic.” “It’s easier to bandage when you crash.” “It shows your definition better.” “It’s intimidating on the start line.” “My girlfriend likes the way it feels.” “It feels great against my bed sheets.” What?
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