Mid-summer form. Saved legs in July. Let’s ride.

Standing on the 8th tee of a golf course on a boiling hot afternoon, I stepped up to address my golf ball with a driver on a long par 5. Everyone else in the foursome had already taken their turn, and no one had hit the fairway. In fact no one seemed to care at that point. It was so hot the sweat was streaming down the backs of everyone in the group. A service cart had come round to our foursome offering cold drinks and towels soaked in ice. The temperature was 94 degrees and the humidity, 80%.

Golf is a weird game, especially when played using carts. In a typical round you cover 18 holes averaging 400 yards (perhaps 7000 yards, or 5+ miles) and you walk perhaps 1/4 of that distance when you’re playing with a cart. No one’s really gong to get fit that way. Yet a round typically takes 4-5 hours to play. A good cyclist can do 80 miles in that time. I always remind my wife of that fact when I’m gone 3 hours on a Saturday morning. “Hey, at least I’m not a golfer. I wouldn’t be home for another hour and a half, and I’d be drunk to boot.”

I grew up with the game of golf, usually carrying my own bag, but have never gotten obsessed with the game to the point where I felt compelled to play it all the time. I’m a casual golfer, who shoots in the high 80s to low 90s. My best score for 18 holes is an even 80 strokes. My handicap is… that I don’t care enough about golf to work to get better.

I’m not embarrassing myself out there but neither am I capable of tearing up the course with my golf scores machismo. There are times when I wish I could. But then I crush another one into the woods and tell myself, “Get real.”

I think other golfers sense that attitude. Which is perhaps why one of the guys in the foursome whom I did not know all that well felt compelled to dig a little deeper about something in my appearance on the golf course.

As I stood over the ball to prepare for my drive, he looked down at my legs and asked: “So, you a cyclist or something?”

I stepped back, knowing the source of his curiosity. It was my shaved legs. In this heat, they were glistening in the sun. That’s what may have set off his Macho-Meter.

“Yes,” I replied.

He gave his chin the requisite Hard Guy nod. Sensing a little competitive dig about my masculinity in his question, I stepped back up to the ball and crushed it down the middle of the fairway. Do not challenge me, I intended the drive to say.

Then I declined to ride on the cart and told them I’d walk to my own ball. “When you guys get back on the short grass, let me know.”

Sure, it was a jerky thing to say. But the implication in asking about my shaved legs with that judgmental tone was just one of those things that ‘real guys’ (and especially real golfers…) can’t seem to resist. Of course, its bullshit.

After all, I didn’t inquire about his fat belly protruding out the middle of his golf shirt, and say something like: “So, you drink a lot of beer?”

After all, that’s a choice he makes, drinking all that beer. And it shows too.

Of course lots of men have fat beer guts and play golf. Some of them play excellent golf. John Daly is the king of good golfers with massive beer guts. In fact there are days out on the golf course when you start to wonder if having a beer gut and looking saggy and out of shape are requirements of the game or a code of some sort? And if having fat beer guts and playing golf are acceptable social behaviors, why should being fit and having shaved legs be considered odd?

I get the fact that having a shaved legs is considered effeminate by some men. Perhaps they would  prefer not to be seen on a golf course with a man who shaves his legs? That seemed to be the point of the comment.

A few holes later the conversation came back around to my shaved legs and the group wanted to know why cyclists do that.

“Tradition,” I told them. “It’s a tradition in cycling. It has some roots in treating injuries and getting massage, but really I think most cyclists shave their legs because the top athletes in the sport do it, and it looks better in some ways to have shaved legs with those aero kits. It also feels better to have shaved legs under the lycra. Overall it’s just more comfortable and efficient.”

A couple of them turned away to make some sort of expression to the trees across the fairway. It was obvious none of these guys would ever dream of shaving their legs.

Yet there I was, shooting decently on the golf course, driving the ball as far as any of them, and putting with the best of them. I shot 85 that day. The best guy in the foursome had an 81, while the other two shot 94 and 101. It was a tough course.

The peanut gallery at home

When I first started shaving my legs 8 years ago my wife jokingly called me “Lady Legs.” She teases me about everything I do, so I didn’t expect any less.

Her brother, by contrast, was a CAT 3 cyclist who shaved his legs for cycling for many years. When he noticed my tan, shaved legs at a family gathering, he smacked me on the side of the thigh with the back of his hand and said: “There’s nothing like riding with shaved legs when you’re fit and its hot outside and a sheen of sweat beads up on your skin. It feels like you’re flying.”

Damn right. He understood. In fact each year he goads me a bit when I’m lazy by April or May and have not shaven my legs by then. “Are you gonna get going this year or what?” he wants to know.

Riding hairy

In 2012 the weather first turned really hot in May and all of my Saturday group was still riding hairy through that month and into April and early May, when in fact the weather cooled for a while.

But then June hit and the temps soared and one day I was out riding solo and looked down and something just didn’t look right. After 40 miles I got home, took out the electric shaver and knocked the hair down to the nubs and then shaved with my Schick until the skin turned smooth and fast-looking. Cycling season was on.

My wife said, “I knew you’d give in sooner or later.”

“Feels good,” I told her. She hates the nubs when I miss a day. Can’t blame her.

Once you’ve ridden with shaved legs it is hard to go back to riding hairy. This summer and in recent years there have been more and more male riders skipping the whole routine. These are good riders too, of all ages, that can ride you off their wheel at 24-26 mph at will. So you feel a bit stupid riding along with your shaved legs when those guys drop you and disappear over the next hill.

When you show up at a criterium and every rider has shaved legs and that carnival feeling of primed athletes fills the atmosphere, you’re almost always glad you’ve got shaved legs. It raises some questions. Is shaving your legs some sort of invisible tattoo? Is it peer pressure? Sure it is. What segment of society doesn’t have peer pressure?

Tattoos

Look around you. So many young men and women seem to be getting permanent tattoos.

They can say all they want that they’re doing it for themselves. That it’s a personal decision. But if it is so personal, and not a product of personal narcissism, why get so many very public tattoos that run down arms and legs, over breasts and genitals?

All tattoos are calculated for some type of impact. Tattoos are the innermost being pasted to the outermost self. They also seem to be some sort of release to help deep inner anxieties and fears. Why else would NBA players plaster themselves with tattoos like ancient warriors? Men have been going into battle for centuries all cut and colored tas a sign of threat against the enemy, to hold themselves together battle. It is superstitious. Supercilious. Superintended. Superfluous. But most of all a tattoo is the signature for a desire for attention.

And so is shaving our legs for cycling.

We cyclists who shave our legs cannot claim to be free from the same sort of narcissism and desire for attention that afflicts the rest of society. Cyclists preen and flex and bulge their way to the starting line. It is part of a ritual. Skintight outfits. Bright colors. Expensive bikes. Sunglasses that cost $250. Road cycling is an elitist sport. It’s expensive. It is frankly a world to itself, which is why so many serious cyclists won’t even look up to say hello as they ride by. They are self-absorbed. “I’m in my own world,” they seem to say. Some of that is concentration. But a chunk of it is accumulated arrogance. Let’s not lie to ourselves. Cycling is a self-absorbed activity in many respects.

Of course some of this is the product of necessity, heightened to a caricature. Those skintight suits are required to avoid wind drag. The shaved legs don’t help much there, but it would seem to make sense that it helps a little. Together the skintight suits and shaved legs do give the overall impression of speed and smoothness. So it is a calculated attempt to create a mindset that suits the sport. Shaved legs. Fast times.

Riding in bas releif

The better cyclists, both men and women, are souls hardened by hours of efforts on the bike. While I’ve been a runner all my life and have suffered plenty of pain and discomfort in competition and training, it feels like I suffer more on the bike. There’s something about being locked to that machine, dragging it up the hill pedal by pedal stroke, that humbles you right to the core, and carves those memories into your mind like a bas relief.

Given that tradition of suffering, it is somewhat ironic that male cyclists should engage in something so tender and intimate as shaving their legs before going out to kill themselves. Well, we’re contradictory people. The sport itself is full of contradictions. We ride in groups but want to beat each other in a sprint. We charge uphills until our legs fail, then charge down the other side pedaling twice as hard just to see the cyclometer read 50. Nuts, it is. Cycling is nuts.

Cyclists are like Seinfeld’s Kramer, who went Commando with the happy cry…. “I’m out there Jerreeeee….And I’m Lovin’ It!”

Other shavers

If we’re talking machismo and body shaving, why are swimmers and more importantly, those fake pro wrestlers castigated for shaving their bodies? Those big, muscular, shaved and oiled wrestlers go bonkers on each other with the crowd cheering bloodlust. No one questions the fact that they shave their legs. And arms. And chest. And who knows what else? Are people just scared to ask the question, or is the homoeroticism of their appearance and outfits too confusing for the average Pro Wrestling fan? Now that’s a question worth asking, to find out some honest reasons for interest in the “sport,” which really isn’t a sport at all. You catch the drift?

By contrast, everything’s real about cycling. Well, except the doping, and the cheating and even paying other racers to let you win. That’s the soap opera side of the sport. A topic for another day.

For now all we can say is that it’s clear from the prevalence of the practice that shaved legs do not make anyone a lesser man. As for whether shaving your legs make you a better man (or woman) depends on how fast you can ride your bike.

It seems there’s only one person who can determine all these questions for you. And that’s you.