Time this article was written – 11 pm, pleasantly weary (30 miles on the bike and two rugby internationals); Units of alcohol this week – 14, several due to the rugby; Kilos (with apologies to Bridget Jones) – 86; Cigarettes – 0 (but then I don’t smoke); Number of close shaves on the steed – none this week, amazingly; Physical injuries – tingling toes at night, chronic ankle
My final preparations for 45 South-West broached three main concerns - my lower back, left foot and nether regions. And two moments of manipulation.
The Triceratops
First the back. Like most of my frame, it has been well used and at times abused. (Once it was so weak it was ‘put out’ by my bending over to put a fork into the dishwasher, so generally I go easy on it nowadays.) Therefore I was a little nervous about spending hours at a time leaning onto my new aerobars (or as I think of it, the triceratops head). And true to form (50% my fault on this occasion), there was very little time left to ‘wear myself in’. James the physio did what he could, instructing me in a few stretches and lifts. This did not involve manipulation.
Next came my left foot, which did. You might say it would be fool-hardy to head off on a 4300 kilometre cycle ride with an arthritic joint, but the ankle is degrading anyway, so who knows how much I’ll be hastening the debilitation; I have been advised not to lose my musculature, and you get good muscle usage for little flexion out of cycling. And hey, I have a book about endurance to write; this event was probably my last chance to research the gerontology chapter - yes, old bloke goes out and tries to do it all again… However, given that the 4375 kilometres (as it turned out) was about to require most of a million rotations of my pedals (it turned out to be more than a million - for the maths, see below), the least I could do was to make it as comfortable as possible for my feet. New insoles then.
I was shown in to see Mick Habgood, who fits insoles for pro cycle teams. He told me to stand in bare feet and cast a professional eye over me. He shucked his teeth like a builder (interestingly this wasn’t in preparation for a handsomely steep increase in price - that was a given already - this was more in recognition of the car crash of lower limb abuse that he was witnessing before him). He asked me to wiggle my toes and point my feet this way and that.
“Well, you’re lucky in one way. Your bad foot has frozen at almost precisely the right angle for pedalling….”
Well, at least that sounds like good news, I thought.
“Unlike your ‘good’ foot…”
Next came the manipulation. I lay on the physio bed and he began to move my feet around. Eventually he flexed my left ankle.
It clunked.
“Oh, man”, he said.
He whipped out some plaster of Paris in a plastic bag and massaged and moulded it around my wonky feet. I was told to expect new soles in three weeks… Apparently three weeks is just inside the ‘pro-window’ (the time recommended to pro cyclists for any new fit. Momentarily I felt rather special being compared to a pro, but then worked out what it meant for me, inadequate time. Oh well, mostly my fault that one). James the Physio (@rehabjames) and Mick Habgood work through Beyond Health, who told the story of my preparations for the ride here.
The third issue, and second manipulation, was also suggested by James the physio, as we discussed cycling and the nether regions. He concluded with a ‘too much information’ smile and a:
“Well, it’s a back, sack and crack for you, then…”
From debilitation to depilation… Putting any fears of propriety to the back of my mind – yes, picture Munch’s Scream, that horrified appeal in the face of an eternal, unknowable, identity-crushing dysphoria – or in my case a fear of showing my bits to a stranger - I girded my loins, so to speak, and strode into Strip, a beauty clinic on Artesian Road in West London. Where I was greeted by professional, spa-smelling calm, and the reassuring Andi.
“I’d like to have a… um… what I believe is called… er… a back, sack and crack. It’s for cycling, you see…” And there I tailed off, so as not to go into the detail of a pustular arse.
There was a very slight pause.
“No, no”, said Andi, “we don’t use words like that to describe it”.
I felt lightly told off, admonished perhaps, as though I was being slapped across the hand with a feather duster, rather than a school ruler. (Yes, I am that old.)
“We call it a peri-anal…”
I winced slightly, then thought: Steady… sounds professional... But Andi paused again, ever so lightly…
“and… well…”
?
“…peri-anal and… bum-cheeks.”
“I’m sorry..?” (Bum cheeks…?! That’s leather strop territory, I thought, that sort of language…)
But, with aplomb, Andi swept the exchange along.
“So, yes, you’ll be wanting a peri-anal and bum-cheeks, or as we now call it, intimate bum.”
“Whatever you say…”
I was directed downstairs to the treatment room, called How does your Garden Grow?, where I sat pretending to read a magazine. A waxing therapist came in; she switched on the wax machine and instructed me to strip off and lie on my front on the massage table, covering myself with a minuscule towel. She exited. I lay with my face in one of those padded massage hoops. Could I hear a hum – the volcanic churning of wax?
It was all very brisk and professional, but still a bit weird – an application, a warm spread from coccyx to the aforementioned er… sack… a pause and – z-i-i-i-p - a strip. Remarkably painless in my case, certainly no outraged screams and stinging pain. I’d say I nearly fell asleep, but with all that fossicking around it would be a lie.
Evidently, however, there were crevices too difficult to reach in my prone position.
“Can you turn over, please, and lift your knees. And you can use the towel to hold yourself out of the way.”
“Er…?” But I got the hang of it, though I suppose it was the opposite of ‘hang’ - as I clutched the rig* in the towel.
Instead, I lay there on my back, knees raised and akimbo, holding the crown jewels out of the way, with a Munch-like look of desperation on my face… and – ZZZ-i-i-i-PPP…!
*With apologies to and in recognition of Martin Amis and his fine turns of vulgar phrase
The Maths
I have estimated the number of turns of my pedals by computing the mileage (kilometreage? I had to do it in metres and kilometres), gears and cogs as follows – a wheel diameter of 69.6 cm, times π (pi) = 2.1865 metres per wheel revolution, which means that the full distance of 4375 kilometres could in theory be covered in 2,000,914.7 revolutions of a 28-622 tyre … Then, say, I covered half of that, on ground that was flat or near enough flat, that would be 1,000,457.3 revolutions; uphill, all of which I would pedal, might be a quarter, ie 1090 km, at 500,228.65 revolutions, and the remaining quarter would be downhill, though let’s say I pedalled only about half of this, ie 250,114.32 wheel revolutions.
Working out pedal revolutions from the wheel-turn is a bit complicated, so I have calculated it via the numbers of teeth on the cogs. The kilometres ridden on the flat, using on average the fifth smallest cog on my 11-41 cassette (yes, 41, much easier for those Tour de France-standard climbs…), involved 19 teeth per rear wheel revolution – 1,000,457.3 x 19 = 19,008,686 teeth interventions, which I then divided by 50 , to represent the teeth of my larger front cog, giving 380,173.72 revolutions of my pedal. Similarly, climbing, at my highest gearing, the quarter distance, ie 500,228.55 times 41 teeth divided by the smaller front cog (with 34 teeth) gives 603,216.76 pedal revolutions. I won’t bother to show the full working of my lowest (or is that highest?) gearing, but on the hardest to pedal cog, only part of the time downhill, I made precisely 55,025.13 pedal revolutions, plus a few ‘spins’. Add them all up and you get an incredibly precise 1,038,415.6 pedal revolutions to cover the distance from Krakow to Tarifa. Yes, that’s – one million and 38 thousand and 400, give or take, turns of the pedal to get from one end of 45 South West to the other. So, yes, carefully fitted insoles are probably a good thing (and I still got ‘Hot Foot’, or metatarsalgia…)