Choosing Cycling Socks: Win with Pearl Izumi

Win Pearl Izumi Socks Below

Admit it.  When you ride past a store window you look at your reflection, your flat-backed position, your dandy color coordinatedness.  In your best Dave Chappelle voice you shake your head and say, “Mmm.  Damn.  I’m one fine looking two-wheeled specimen.”  Like fly-fishing, cycling is half fashion show.  Rolling past Cincinnati’s Verdin bell and clock factory on Riverside Drive, I checked myself out in the reflection of the blacked out windows.  Holy hell!  My socks were as hideous as rubber waders.  Tall white socks with light blue stripes stuck out of the top of my red accented jet black Pearl Izumi shoes like aero bars on a group ride.  It was a triple-snap-clash sista. 

My Team Jersey

Getting ready for a work meeting, my wife stands in front of the full length mirror.  She kicks off one pair of shoes for another, keeps the bag, but ditches the belt.  She asks if the shirt looks better tucked in a little or a lot.  “A little tucked in,” I answer.  There’d be a lot less dorky looking male cyclists if they took a tip from a primping business woman and wheeled their entire ensemble (bike, shorts, jersey, helmet, shoes, sunglasses and all) in front of a full length mirror. 

Drunk Artist Rendering of Perfect Sock

Instead of learning from my wife, my fashion feeble man brain thought I needed tall blue cycling socks…you know, to match my blue and white BioWheels team kit.  I typed the exact phrase into the image search of Yahoo.  Magically 300 pictures of tall blue socks appeared in every shade, length and color combination imaginable.  Row by row, page by page, I dismissed every last one of them as too aqua, too tall for UCI, not enough style.  I went so far as to drink 3 beers and design the perfect sock with Microsoft Crayon 2.0.

I was Mister Pitt, Elaine’s incessantly picky boss in a sock buying episode of TV’s Seinfeld.  He screams, “I want a decent sock that’s comfortable THAT WILL STAY ON MY FOOT!”  Mister Pitt proves what has eluded scientists for centuries.  The fashion part of the male brain can only decipher two variables, in his case, comfort and tightness.  Shorts match jersey.  Bar tape matches bike.  Socks match team kit.  Throw in patterns, design, helmets, shoes, gloves and glasses and the male fashion brain drops to its knees like Elaine, covers its head and screams away the impending frustration induced aneurism.  Hence, most men end up with two pair of work shoes, black and brown. 

Socks Bridge Jersey & Shorts to Shoes & Bike

Two pair of shoes!  That was the key right there.  I have two pairs of cycling shoes.  My road shoes are black with red accents (at left).  My MTB shoes are white with green accents.  My shoes match my bikes.  I needed socks that bridge the gap between team kit and my bike and shoes.  Like my wife’s belts, shoes and bags, cycling socks tie the ensemble together.  I virtually rolled each look in front of the full length mirror.  I ended up choosing three pair of socks, one for each look …road, cyclocross and mountain. 

WIN THREE PAIR OF SOCKS FROM PEARL IZUMI:

1-Consider your three favorite cycling looks: road, mountain, cyclocross.

2-Click here and choose 3 pair of Pearl Izumi socks to complete your outfits.

3-Post a comment with your 3 choices (style/color/size) by 11:59p 7/25/12.

RULES OF THE ROAD: Winner will be chosen randomly from all entries.  “Anonymous” comment entries will not be considered.  Please be aware that we’ll need to get in touch with you, so include an email in your profile and/or “like” us on Facebook so we can get in touch with you if need be.  Winner will be announced on 7/26/12.  Good luck and thanks for reading!

Soigneur For Hire

Excerpt From CyclingNews.com

Ka-rack!  Lightning struck the high rise condo building which looms over our backyard along the Ohio River.  While I was sort of disappointed my wish didn’t come true and Thor once again missed the ugly dead tree in our neighbor’s overgrown yard, I was happy to be taking care of domestics.  I’m my own soigneur. 

Domestics is a term coined by a former teammate, a civil way of saying, “I’ve named the dust bunnies in my living room.”  He used it as a reason he couldn’t ride, but think he had it sort of backwards.  I save the domestics for when I can’t ride, like last night.  That’s what cyclists do when it rains.  In a sport that more or less depends on fair weather to enjoy, there’s a reason to smile when it rains.  While it may be close to crawling away on its own, the VW Beetle sized pile of dirty clothes at the foot of your bed isn’t going to wash itself.

I wrangled the recyclables and cleaned the cat boxes.  It was 5:45pm.  With black clouds creeping closer, raindrops tapped on the windows.  Normally on a Tuesday, I’d be filling water bottles and searching for the ever elusive taillight.  Like a bad friend cancelling a date, the rain waits to fall 30 minutes before the group ride starts.  At least I saw it coming on radar.  I had an hour or more to kill before there’d even be a chance to clip in.

Click Here to see more sweet Trail Runners from Pearl Izumi

As the Channel 9 meteorologists advised people in the northern suburbs to take their “tornado safe place” over footage of flood water pouring down Eden Park’s public steps, I man-sorted jeans & t-shirts, whites and delicates into three relatively separate piles.  I found my long lost Smithwick socks under the bed.  Back upstairs, I emptied the dishwasher.  Looking back at the TV and using my superior storm tracking cycling senses, I saw a break between storms and deduced I had about a 40 minute window.  Not long enough for a ride, so I stuffed a load in the washer and tied the laces on my Pearl Izumi Peak II’s.  By the time I'd come back from back from my run, it'd be perfect timing to get the load in the dryer.  On the way out for a flat 5k, I wheeled the recycling to the curb.  While I’ll never go pro, I’d have a solid career as a pro cycling team soigneur.

Cinti #FightforAirClimb, Any Monkey Can Win

Except if I was late to work, I never ran up a single flight of stairs.  The longest “run” I’ve done since Christmas is 90 seconds.  I’m not rubbing it in or bragging about finishing tied for 3^rd at the American Lung Association's Fight for Air Climb at Cincinnati's Carew Tower.  Aside from giggling at my dumb luck, I am pointing out that “run” and “stairs” are not the operative words.  Climbing the Carew Tower is not about running stairs.  It’s pretty much climbing like a monkey, a very fit and determined monkey. 

Me 2nd from Right with the Rewind 94.9 Rump Shakers

Climbing is the operative word.  In fact, I’m pretty certain I heard a hair raising cackle echo in the stairwell on my way up that gave me chicken skin.  “Ooh ooh ah ah ah ahhh!” No doubt I am half man, half monkey.  Ask my wife.  If I could’ve clawed the handrails and walls with my feet, I would have.  Now I’m not saying it was easy.  To the contrary, it was donkey wheezing, sniveling, spastic arms flailing being chased the boogie man hard.  Bounding is a good term.  Tree-squirreling would be another.  It was not pretty, but fast and effective.

Evil Monkey in Full-Effect

Aside from finding a similarly tight stairwell with handrails within reach on both sides, the 2^nd best training would be boarding a cruise ship as it pulls away from port.  You’re not running a gangway so much as getting from the dock to the ship before the rope-railed gangway goes crashing into the ocean.  The 3^rd best training would be running from an axe murderer in your basement.  You would not run.  You would not step on the stairs.  With your heart rate pegged at max you would go from basement to 1^st floor by whatever means possible, a foot on a wall, a hand on a pipe.  If you must run stairs, the closest analogy is running the pedestrian stairs over an overpass...as it crumbles onto the freeway below.  That is the Fight for Air Climb.

Secret Weapons

As it turns out for me, cyclocross bike racing was a near perfect training.  You don’t run up the stairs.  Hands reaching and grasping, you pull your way up, your feet cross-eye aimed at two steps higher.  Look at the position of a cyclist.  Handlebars become handrails.  Pedals are two-stairs high.  In cyclocross and mountain bike racing, we’re used to getting the “holeshot”, first into the first corner with quick fast twitch speed, trying to essentially eliminate your competition by the first turn.  Most races are all about the first lap, the first 7 to 7.5 minutes of the race.  My time at Climb The Carew was 6:27.  I trained for the Cyclocross Masters World Championships in January with months of 30 and 15 second sprint intervals.  Obviously, some of that fitness is still with me.  The cycling training success fits the advice Marty Sanders, 2012 Vertical Mile Winner, gave me before the start.  He said, “Take two stairs at a time, use the hand rails, don’t run and give ‘er hell when you hit the hallway with 15 stories to go.”  Marty is also an accomplished cyclist and half monkey as well.

I’m not kidding.  I don’t think I could race a 5k without being laid up with sore hammies for two days.  To confess, I have been running, if you want to call it that.  I “run” on a treadmill.  My fastest and longest run is 90 seconds at 7.5mph.  High speed intervals.  In my head I run like Jason Bourne for 90 seconds, and then walk for a minute.  In reality I run like I'm escaping a house fire and walk like a zombie.  Then I do it over and over again for about 15 minutes.  That’s it.

The Next Best Thing to Monkey Feet

I will confess.  I did inadvertently have a secret weapon, maybe two, okay 3.  It was chilly, so I wore a thin set of full-finger gloves on a short jog from my car the Carew Tower.  Made for cycling, they had sticky grippers on the palm and fingers, perfect for gripping handlebars and as it turns out 45 stories of railings.  I wore a pair of tall day glow green tall striped socks (pictured above).  They make me go fast to run away from the heckling.  Oh yeah, and I just got a new pair of Pearl Izumi Peak II trail running shoes.  They’re light, have a snug and soft close fit, and are the perfect color of blue.  While most running shoes might come close to those attributes, the killer grip of Pearl Izumi's sole stands out.  No matter where my feet happened to land, I didn’t slip once, obviously the next best thing to having monkey feet.

Cling Wrap Pants

You know you’re a forty year old athlete when…you forget your pants.  This is the third time for me in as many weeks.  Maybe it’s an early sign.  Three out of the last five times I’ve brought clothes to go running from work, I’ve forgot my running tights.  I know there’s a difference between tights and pants but, the word “pants” seems to fit better and it’s funnier.  Pants.  See?  It’s been less than 25 degrees out each of those days I planned on running over lunch at work.  Needless to say, some sort of leg covering is sort of necessary.  I’m not a card carrying member of the Polar Bear Club.  I don’t garner any sadistic tough guy feeling from cold franks and beans (There’s Something About Mary).  While it’s only temporary and personally embarrassing, there’s still shrinkage to consider.

“Son of a!” is my usual exclamation.  This phrase is usually uttered after three complete inventories of the contents of my backpack while bending over berries in the breeze in the employee restroom.  That is then followed by the horrific thought that if I forgot my tights, I might have forgot to lock the door.  I turn to check.  Fhew!  Then I laugh wondering what if someone outside the bathroom door heard me say “son of a!”  Then I chuckle inside wondering what if someone outside heard me laughing in the bathroom.  Then there’s a brief thought of actually going outside in 17 degree weather with only shorts to protect Johnson and the Nuggets.  So far, I’ve had better sense.  I guess if you’re driving through Cincinnati’s Eden Park when it’s sub 25 degrees outside and see me running bare legged that I have taken the step into senility and you’re welcome to shout “hey dufus, put on some pants” from your car window.    

With this track record, I know that it will be cold again in the coming weeks; I will want to go for a run over lunch; I will forget my pants again.  So, like a kid with idiot straps on his mittens, I need to prepare for my own stupidity.  Since I obviously don’t have the brain power at seven o’clock in the morning to remember seven items of clothing, I could write a list: socks, shoes, tights, shorts, long sleeve shirt, hat, and jacket.  I could bring a spare set of winter running clothes and leave them in a cabinet.  Or, there’s always the Glad Cling Wrap in the employee kitchen, if I could trust myself to remember to put my work pants back on before I walk down the hallway.