The Magic Sponge
As mentioned previously, America has some very, very straight roads, which for somethings are brilliant, for example, if the wind is behind you. Unfortunately, when the wind is right at you it is soul destroying. The part I struggled with most was knowing that the wind that was coming from the West and going to the East and that it was now going to be there for the remainder of the journey. It took me back to Scotland and the start line at John 0’Groats, no matter how hard I pushed, I felt like I was going backwards. If I stood and tried to pedal out of my saddle I made myself bigger and the wind caught me and pushed me back further. Tears streamed down my face, the wind ferocious in its efforts to break me.
Map of LA Photo Gallery
We were heading to a Town called Springfield, it is the home of Abraham Lincoln and of course The Simpsons. Sadly, that is about as much trivia as I can give you about Springfield as the main thoughts going through my mind were how to stop my bum from hurting. I was wearing full tights and a long-sleeved top; the temperature had dropped considerably. The bike was starting to hurt me worse than I thought it would have. At home, I spend every day on some sort of bike, whether it’s a spin bike, watt bike or my own push bike so I thought that the saddle soreness would not be a problem – how wrong I was. I longed for smooth tarmac but in order to avoid pain this nearly had to be as smooth as a bowling alley. Every slight bobble in the road was met with immense pain. I was shuffling and shimmying in the saddle trying to get just a second’s respite from the horrors of it. There was no escaping it, it got to a point where I could manage about 2 minutes in the saddle and then I had to stand up and get out of the saddle all the while knowing at some point I would have to sit down again. I had taken every piece of advice thrown at me – wear pants, don’t wear pants, get well-padded shorts, wear a thin pad and many others. These are all excellent ideas but unfortunately none of them helped. I was applying chamois cream by the handful, not a pleasant site for anyone. If you don’t know what this cream is, it is cream you apply to your posterior to stop the chafing. It looks and feels quite strange. I was at a point of desperation, a point where I was breaking the day into tiny 20-minute blocks and then getting off the bike and walking around to try and ease the pain, even if only for a few minutes. At the back of your mind, every stop you take you know is a little bit more added on to the end of your day because whichever way you look at it you have to get the mileage done.
We pulled over in a small town called Lincoln. Whilst I walked around very slowly allowing the blood to flow back into my butt cheeks, the team went and bought a sponge. It wasn’t anything special or fancy, a $4 sponge from a random grocery shop. You will not see sponges become an essential part of a cyclist kit bag but to me and the team this sponge was magical. I stuffed the sponge down the back of my shorts and sat on the bike, in comparison to earlier I could have been sat on a deck chair at the beach or even better on the sofa in my living room The pain and torture from the morning had gone. I gave an orgasmic sigh as I sat on the saddle, the relief, I am sure, was evident all over my face.
The head wind was still proving to be a problem, however. I was not able to hit my averages and so my mileage was down on the day. Normally I can average between 27-30 miles per hour, I was only pushing at around 22 miles per hour. It was painful, gruelling work. The sponge was doing its job in protecting my rear but I was emptying my energy reserves quickly, expending vast amounts of energy just to maintain the current average speed.
