These aren't the men you're looking for. Photo: Tim De Waele
I am thrilled to announce that for the first time in my life, my chest measurement is smaller than my hip measurement, an accomplishment I’m not sure many men around the world would be proud to admit. A Cyclist has no use for an upper body, we’re not going about lifting things with our arms; we are the sort of people who do all our lifting with our legs. We just need enough to hold the handlebars and pull from time to time while chewing the bar tape; beyond that, upper bodies are little more than extra weight and I’ve got more of that than I need already.
When I boasted about this tremendous feat to a few work colleagues, none of them showed any appreciation for my accomplishment whatsoever. Mostly they looked at me askance, not unlike how my dog looks at me when I’m talking to her in complete sentences. I could sense them resisting the temptation to start rotating their heads until they fell over like she does. The most any of them could muster was joking about how I must look at the beach, at which point I returned the favor of not having a clue what they were on about. Honestly, I’m much more worried about looking good in my skinsuit than I am about looking good in my mankini.
The first thing one observes when meeting Pro Cyclists is how tiny they are; they look like normal folks on TV but when you see them in real life they look like birds with a gland problem. Alpine ski racers also look like normal people on TV, but when you see them in person you realize they are thrice the size of a normal person, plus two. Either of Bode Miller’s arms are bigger than my right gun, the bigger of the two.
Kate Moss said that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Apparently even Kate Moss couldn’t go her whole life without saying something sensible eventually. Being light on a bike is an amazing feeling, and we sacrifice all socially acceptable aesthetics in this pursuit. To be skinny is also to look good on a bike; hunching over a top tube chewing our handlebars isn’t a terribly flattering posture to begin with, one not made any more appealing with a gut protruding into the void.
I’ve never heard a Cyclist say they are happy with their weight, or that they feel they are skinny enough. No matter how skinny we are, we are still too fat. Most Cyclists greet each other with a little pinch on the arm to gauge one another’s weight – the first intimidation of the ride or the first bit of morale, depending on which side of the pinch you are. “Cyclists’ Sizing” is a phenomenon where a rider needs to wear their bibshorts a size bigger than their jersey. This is the maximum body image goal of the Cyclist, to have massive guns and a tiny torso.
I’m on the train, but I’m not there yet. To hasten the journey, I fancy the 5am Spanish Turbo Session in full leggings, long sleeve jersey, and casquette in order to kick start my metabolism in the morning. And then I skip breakfast and lunch. And dinner, if I can manage it. I prefer to cut calories out of my food diet than out of my drinking diet; success is all about setting attainable goals.
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View Comments
@wilburrox
Push-ups are essential for a cyclist! The triceps do not enlarge by doing them but they do gain the strength and stamina to hold a low fast position in the drop for hours at a time. The core also get's a hit while you are at it. I do mine with a weighted back-pack and my arms are not dissimilar to Froomy's.
I've dropped from 95kg to 65kg (187cm tall). Most people tell me I need to ear more but only those that have no idea how much I eat! Depending on the next days training I eat between 8000kj and 13300kj. When people suggest I must like riding to train as I do I tell them, nope - just like eating.
@fignons barber
Maybe. The research I have read doesn't show a marked improvement in endurance events (outside track) after weight lifting. I do do gym work, but it's just about all body weight based and doesn't lead to bulking.
There is a personal trainer & gym owner in town. This guy is freaking huge. One of his butt cheeks is being catalogued as a new planet by the way. Anyway, he comes on bunch rides and I love it because it's the only time I can best him. Scrawny, skinny me can ride is 2% body fat, 250kg body into the ground no problems. Best thing is his company moto, emblazoned on his jersey is "how bad do you want it" so when I ride him off my wheel I turn back smiling and ask "so how bad DO you want it?"
Boonen looks likes quite different in the title photo compared to this " get outa my fkn way, im about to unleash " photo.
@Barracuda
This is a good example of how being on the bike adds kilo's to your appearance. My wife took a photo of me finishing a race and while I was walking my bike back to the car after changing into street clothes. Though taken within twenty minutes of one another, in the former I looked muscular and in the latter I looked like I was on my way to my first meal after just stopping a hunger strike.
Coincidentally, this theme was going through the head on last night's ride after another office based encounter. Some non V related internet browsing picked up an article that listed my industry 7th in the top 10 in Aus for overweight & obese workers with a frightening 65% landing in those two categories.
I shared said article on the book of faces along with the kind of smug, sarcastic comment that someone of 183cm & 78kg can safely make. One of the responses received (unsurprisingly from one of the 65%) was that it "easy for you to laugh at your size", which actually hit a sore point.
There's nothing easy about spending up to 10hrs a week on the bike, and finding the time to do so while striking a "balance" with a 40hr work week & raising 3 kids under 3, but if it were easy, where would the achievement be?
The fact that it requires some effort & sacrifice is the exact reason that a lazy, path of least resistance, waste of space such as the questioner cannot maintain any form of dietary control for longer than the time between morning tea & lunch...
During my summer training I reached a point where I was not recovering adequately. I felt like I was doing everything correctly, but was struggling to complete my daily sessions. I contacted a sports nutritionist and was told to log my daily food intake and training regimen. I emailed her the log and saw her at the beginning of the next week. She did a body fat analysis at her office and then we talked about scheduling blood testing. I had the blood testing completed, which checked everything you could imagine. It was very comprehensive and expensive (enzymes, hormones, thyroid, liver and kidney, IGF, insulin, basic and advanced nutrients, etc). I was hoping that they would find something was out of balance.
A few days later the results were back. At 43 years old I had the health of a athlete 20 years younger. Great news but... so, back with the nutritionist, I was surprised when she told me that my body was starving. 3500-4000 calories per day was not enough to allow my body to fully recover. My body was not going to allow itself to burn those calories to fuel my recover, it was in survival mode. I eat a very clean diet and 4000 calories of clean food is a hell of a lot of food. How was I going to eat 5000-6000 calories as was recommended? She said, "it is like a job and sometimes hard work". When she gave me my body fat score of 3% she said that this low level was not adequate enough for my training stress and actually unhealthy. My new diet plan, that she designed, would help me bump it to 5% and it would include much more healthy lipids (avocados, nuts, seeds, coconut and olive oil) and much more protein per day.
When I went to see her, my weight was a steady 62 kilos. I was not trying to lose any weight, never had a problem with being too fat to climb. My problem was, I was too thin. Fast forward 4 weeks and my weight was now 64 kilos and I was much stronger and recovering better. My grocery bill is now outrageous, but I feel great.
My advice, there is such a thing as too thin so find a sports specific nutritionist. She helped me tremendously and she is now my new VMH.
Message me is you need some nutrition advice.
This is the beauty of hardcore touring/bikepacking. If you ride long enough, day after day, you can scour the aisles of the Quik-E-Mart for the highest-calorie snacks and stop at every roadside barbecue joint and still lose weight. Sometimes alarmingly.
@frank
They look big on bikes it is in part because they like to ride really small bikes.
@KBrooks
Man you hit the nail on the head. I'm constantly laughing inwardly at work lunches etc at my coworkers who are all "Oh, I can't it's not on my diet/plan/New Year's Resolution to give up sweets/carbs/fat/processed/coffee/milk/gluten...." meanwhile I'm just nodding and shoveling it in b/c I've got an 80k route after work I have to prep for. If they would only get off their ass then they wouldn't have to torment themselves so. Still, To me food is just a means to an end, that being to lay down massive V, of course.
@frank
I like to think my chest is larger than my waist because of my humongous lung capacity and my outsized pumper. Although I always need trousers a couple inches too big in the waist to fit over the legs. As a result, I don't tuck my shirts in much - it would just accentuate the bunched fabric under the belt and make people think I don't know how to buy clothes. Looks super ridiculous when I have to wear a suit to work. The tailor lady says "not to be rude, but you have a big butt." Made my day.
Lance used to say " get use to going to bed hungry ".