The Dirt Field

As all competitive cyclists know, there are certain rites of passage that are realities of the sport: the first snot rocket, the first saddle sore, the first time you bonk hard enough to willingly accept questionable food from a stranger on the side of the road. Achieving these firsts often comes with competing emotions; on one hand you think, “I can’t believe I just did that – I’m hardcore!” while on the other hand you think, “I can’t believe I just did that.”

I went out for a ride the other day in the pouring rain. Ninety minutes in, I still had another thirty to go and was completely soaked. That’s fine; there’s something exhilarating about training in a downpour. Anytime I see other people out exercising in bad weather, they’re almost always smiling, like hey! this shitty weather is AWESOME! And I understand completely, because I too am usually grinning. Add something like hail or a tornado to the mix and we’d all explode from pure joy.

With thirty minutes left in the ride, I was faced with an un-ignorable need to pee. Every bump on the road had become a source of wincing and holding it until the ride was done wasn’t an option. Normally that would mean removing my rain jacket and jersey and peeling down my bib shorts, but I had read something helpful on Twitter last week: a tutorial on how women can pee quickly mid-ride. I was skeptical about the success rate (defined in my book as executing the move without leaving more than a few drops on my person/kit), but what better time to try than when I was already drenched?

So I pulled to the side of the trail, hiked up the leg of my shorts (it was my first ride in the new XO Racing kit), and yanked the inside of the hem out as far from my thigh as it would go. I heard a few threads snap under the strain and panicked about ruining my new shorts, so I loosened the tension and made the opening smaller. Then…well, let’s be frank here. Then I peed all over my glove and shorts.

It was definitely a failure. Either the writer has vastly more forgiving shorts or a wildly different anatomical layout, because I don’t see how else that method could work unless you define success as “I no longer have to pee, nevermind that I’m wearing most of it.” After I was done (what, you think I stopped the second it went awry? have you never had to go like whoa?), I got back on my bike, feeling more than a little ashamed, and prayed for the pouring rain to wash away my sins.

Then, for the first time in ninety-two minutes, the rain stopped.