Smedium: New Clothes Sizes for Cyclists

I Propose A New Size

“Where’s your ass?” my wife asked.  “I know you have a butt, a nice butt, but I don’t see it.”  Apparently my caboose got derailed in these 33W X 33L jeans I’m wearing.  I think I pulled them off the hanger from the pre-vegan section of my closet.  Maybe I’ve slightly neglected my personal sex appeal over 14 years of marriage, but my wife deserves to see my fine cyclocross sculpted rear bumper.  Two days later, the golden e-mail hit her smartphone, “Tonight only, 40% off at Banana Republic.”  It was mutually decided, skip the easy Monday night at the gym for an hour or two doing dressing room gymnastics.  Oh boy, it got gymnastical.

With four plaid collared button down dress shirts, a baby blue merino wool sweater and a long-john-esque “waffled” long sleeve tee, Joe or Nick or Kevin or one of the Jonas Brothers working at Banana Republic showed me to my stall.  As far as the button downs, I’m upset to report I’m a size Smedium.  From the last time I bought nice shirts and today, I’ve probably lost 12-15 pounds.  Staring in the mirror with the medium, I could gather 5-6 inches of fabric around my middle.  Dammit, it took me months of intervals and hummus to earn this waist.  I want to show it off.  So with the hesitation of a former large, I slipped on the small. 

Hmm...not too poochy in the small.

I could sort of see the last uncyclocrossed remnants of my pooch showing.  I’m not 6-pack sculpted, more of a two-pack.  Like the woman in the dressing room next to me, I went back and forth between the two sizes: small, medium, small, medium.  “Welcome to my world,” I could hear my wife saying.  I spent so much time in that dressing room with so many items I wondered if the Jonas Brother was getting suspicious of shoplifting.  I opted for the small, yet still puzzled.  Why do pants come in so many different sizes stores practically need a card catalog to organize the shelves by size and style, yet shirts at Banana Republic have only four sizes for men, small through XL?  So there’s my case for Smedium (SM) and Mediarge (ML).

As for the jeans, I walked into the store saggin’ no ass pre-vegan 33 squares, 33W x 33L.  Going sub-33 was new territory for me, so I sent Jonas ahead, armed with 32’s, 31’s and even a pair of 30’s.  The 32’s were clown pants.  I hooked the waist with my thumbs.  I could probably shove 3 summer sausages down the front of them.  The butt looked like denim drapery.  So I got extreme.  Wiggling and shimmying, I had to get gymnastical to get the 30’s on.  Beyond surprised, they buttoned right up and fell flat on the hips.  However, the thighs were so tight they could double as muscle recovery wear.  It’s the cyclists curse. 

Those Quads Need A Belt

You ride your butt off, try to eat healthy and lose weight, but your newly acquired Andre’ Greipel in training quads and hammies get so big you need to opt for the larger size.  I walked out of the dressing room without pants, new pants, and this thought.  I propose adding three dimensional sizing to men's pants.  The “T” could mean thigh or tree-trunk, or for skinny people, tent pole.  Instead of 31W x 33L, for those with 20 inch hams like me, we’d have 30W x 33L x 21T.  One way or another, my wife deserves to oogle my ass.

Gee Your Chamois Smells Terrific

There’s mountain biking on a Colorado morning enveloped in the aroma of a dewey pine forest.  Then there’s a coffee ride downtown behind a truck belching black diesel exhaust.  There’s the aromatic scent of riding a park bike path through a grove of lilac bushes.  Then there’s being behind the retired local bike nut that can’t bring himself to wash let alone throw his reeking Mapai kit away.  There’s good manure, when riding past posh Lexington, Kentucky horse farms.  There’s bad manure, Eastern Kentucky chicken farms.  One of my favorite rides rolls past the Precinct Steakhouse in the beginning and finishes with fresh chocolate chip cookies at the Kellogg factory in Fairfax.  At a cyclocross race back in '03 some racers jumped the gun mistaking a rider's pre-race hearty beefy toot for the starters pistol.  From florescent green algae covered frog ponds to cemented urban rivers, many rides are defined by their nose.   Love ‘em, hate ‘em, smile or cry burning tears, they’re part of the experience.

Usually its nature, or the city or “that guy” that’s the source of the olfactory experience, until this past Thursday’s ride, where the smell emanated from moi.  No, I was not wearing a funkified freak show decade’s old Mapai kit.  However, someone had the gall to ask me, “What detergent do you use?”  At first I felt a moment of hesitation.  I quick sniffed my pits.  Was it a leading question, leading to, “do you even use detergent?”  I braced for the worst and dusted my thoughts for a comeback or at least an excuse.  Before I could respond gracefully, she added, “No.  I mean your kit smells nice.  What detergent do you use?” 

I was floored.  I’ve been asked about embrocation, training techniques, favorite routes, bar tape and the best place to pee on this stretch of road.  You name it.  This was the first time someone enquired about laundry detergent and the fine fragrance of my fanny, halfway through a ride I might add.  My riding friends from Cincinnati’s hometown Proctor and Gamble will be pleased to know we use new Tide Sport with Febreze, or maybe it's Tide Febreze Sport.  Well after further research, the Tide website calls it "NEW Tide plus Febreze Freshness Sport Liquid Laundry Detergent."  It boasts that, "Tide plus Febreze Freshness SPORT is specially formulated to fight tough sports stains like grass, dirt, clay, and blood."  No mention of roink reek or taint rot on the label, but apparently it works on bike shorts too.  After I caught my breath from reading the brand name, I saw it has a picture of a great smelling pretty woman jogger on the label.  You can tell she smells wonderful because her shirt is green and it appears she's running on a cloud, which we all know is the worlds best smelling environment for working out in the world.  It's a heck of a lot less expensive than Sportwash and single stinky gentlemen take note, it’s obviously a hit with the ladies.