“I was in a 12-hour race, it just took me 13 hours to do it.” – Vinnie-ism
Several years back I was at Universal Cycles working on one of my bikes. The owners of the shop have always taken care of me. As anyone into cycling knows, a good service department is worth its weight in gold. It may also mean that your bike will have to be there several days waiting in line to be fixed. The folks at Universal have always been good about getting me back on the road immediately. I guess you can call me a professional of sorts since I actually use my bike to make a living. They’ve also allowed me to work on my own bikes in the service department. One day as I was putting a new chain on my bike, a triathlete strolled in with a beautiful Cervelo tri-bike. The triathlete told Carlos what he needed. Carlos said, “Great, leave it there, I’ll take care of it.” At the same time, Carlos stayed away from the bike as if it had the plague. As soon as the owner of the bike walked out of the shop, Carlos had the guy who worked under him take the bike out back and scrub it down. Noticing this odd behavior, I asked Carlos why he wouldn’t wait until after he fixed the bike to clean it. After all, it seemed to make more sense. That’s when Carlos mentioned his hard and fast rule: Never touch a tri-bike until it’s perfectly clean. His reasoning, “Those crazy bastards pee on perfectly good bikes.” I told you that to tell you this. I’ve peed while on the bike exactly once. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a 12-hour mountain bike race in southern California. It was a race where I had been the bridesmaid twice before, finishing second. It was a tough race up in the Big Bear Lake area called 12 Hours at the Summit. For 11 hours I traded the lead with one other guy. I would take him on the uphill climb, but the guy had crazy downhill skills that I’ve never had. And lap after lap, he would pass me on the downhills. I knew if I had any chance of winning the race, the wheels of my bike could not stop. I started to have trouble during the ninth and tenth hour, knowing I had to go to a bathroom. I knew in the 11th hour that it was going to become a kidney problem if I didn’t relieve myself soon. So, during my last uphill, I waited until I got to a 100-yard flat spot in the climb to stand on the pedals, whip it out and go for it. As I thought I could clear me and the bike, the attempt became futile. And there I was peeing on a $5,000 carbon Trek mountain bike. As it turned out, I didn’t win the race that day. But the next day, as I washed urine from my bike, I realized that I gave it all I had. In the interest of giving you more information than you need to know, in the big stage races like the ones you see Lance Armstrong in (Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, Vuelta a Espana), those guys do what’s called natural breaks. They talk to each other within the peloton. Once they decide that enough people really need to pee, they will stop as a group without getting off their bikes, pee, and catch the peloton as a group. In most instances, the peloton will wait for the group. It’s kind of like NASCAR under a yellow flag (no pun intended). But triathletes have it different. Just like mountain bike racing, drafting is illegal. In the pro division, stopping could be the end of your race. But most triathletes have another advantage. They will ride their bike with the swimsuit they had on in the water. Even if they wear tri-style shorts, there is little or no padding to hold urine. Once the urine clears the lycra, the lycra will dry quickly. You may ask why I would even entertain this question. Believe it or not, it’s the type of question people ask me all the time. I’m just giving people what they want. I’m a pleaser.
