It’s a dilemma some years.

by Christopher Cudworth

My brother-in-law is a former CAT 3 cyclist who moved on to skydiving about 10 years back and now doesn’t ride or jump out of airplanes.

But he relishes the annual question of whether I am planning to shave my legs each summer.

“You know, when you get out on a warm June day and the sun is shining and there’s a light breeze, you’re going to want to have shaved legs,” he tells me every spring. “There’s nothing like the feeling of feeling strong and having shaved legs.”

His comments are proof to me that shaving your legs for cycling really isn’t about tradition or vanity or being prepared for road rash in case you crash. It’s about feeling and even looking fast even if you aren’t. That fast. Or going to race much. Or sporting a team kit.

The wind on your skin

It’s just about the wind on your skin. The sweat on your thighs. The general acceptance that shaving your legs is how you set yourself aside for the summer. You are a cyclist. Shaving your legs is like the reverse of a tattoo. It is not a permanent commentary on how you are different. It is a temporary concession to summery hopes of long smooth rides with your bike shorts touching nothing but skin.

Gradual patterns

It takes a bit to get ride of the hair, and then the stubble. It’s best not done in one fell swoop. Shave down the leg hair with an electric trimmer set on low. Let your legs recover a while. Then soak in the shower a bit and even the bath. Give your pores a chance to breath. Then hit the shaving cream and pull out the Schick MegaQuattro or Gillette Shavesalot and remember the pattern in which your hair grows and pull the razor over the skin.

It doesn’t take that long. Yet the transformation is almost instant. You’re in for real then. There will be rides when you are are shot through and yet you look down at your legs shining in the sun and say, “There must be something left in there.” And there is. You make it through the false flats and the long drags into the wind and get home completely zonked and say to yourself, “I made it.”

And that’s good enough reason for the razor.

Running with shaved legs

Of course you feel a little funky with shaved legs when you go out to run in the early season before the sun has had a chance to brown up your legs a touch. Pasty legs with no hair look pretty odd if you don’t wear shorts over your knees. Especially if you are a man of a certain age.

Then there’s the condition of your skin in general. Sun loves to brown your skin but it also ages it. What are those striations and odd lines going horizontal across your leg? Signs of aging. Enough to make you slather on the sunscreen. But then you’re back at ground zero with pasty white legs that look like you never get out.

It’s a dilemma,, but I love it. I run and ride for purposes that can’t always be explained. We travel with our own mysteries. Some riders don’t even pause to think of all this. They just shave and go. Have at it.