Pro-Sports

Call it stupidity, but I agreed to join a three person team for the Malakoff Malaysian duathlon series. When I agreed to it, I had the idea that I would be taking on one of the running legs. Somehow or other, I ended up with the 45km biking leg. Perhaps it was by default since I was the only one in my team who was in possession of a bike.

We are The Reds – dubbed after Liverpool because I happened to be watching the match against Blackburn when G messaged me for a team name. Laugh it up, but someone had actually suggested “Power Puff” – good grief! I might have survived the name but I doubt my two male partners would ever be able to face the world again without being taunted about “Brokebacking”.

Anyway, Thursday night, D came over for dinner and I told him I was in the race for this Sunday. He looked over my bike and raised an eyebrow about whether I was seriously thinking of riding a trail bike for a road race. I had been feeling fairly calm about the race up until my exchanges with D.

After some measurements for crotch clearance (no, it’s not really as crude as you think – I’m talking about the distance from the ground to your crotch, a measurement used to determine the height your bike should be at), we discovered that I have fairly long legs. With a 1.5 inch difference in crotch clearance between us, I should be able to use his road bike.

On the eve of the race, I went over to D’s house to test ride the bike and to familiarize myself with the gears. Before I’d even begun, I’d nearly catapulted myself onto the ground because I couldn’t remember how to get on and off the bike. When I finally got moving, I ran into some difficulties pressing the front gear shifts. I couldn’t move the chain to the larger gear because my left hand fingers didn’t have the strength required.

Okay, skip the larger gear. I was pretty sure I could survive on the middle gear just toggling up and down on the rear gears.

After about 2km, my rear was starting to ache and the webbing between my thumb and fore finger was hurting from being jammed against the handle bars so I could hit the brakes when necessary. I powered up a short 500m hill and found my quads were burning by the time I had reached the top. I could hardly imagine having to ride another 43km of this.

Suddenly, I found myself questioning the wisdom of being so agreeable to enter the race with effectively zero training. The last time I rode was in December last year… I ought to win an award for stupidity.

So in the famous words of Cover Boy: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

May the force be with me.

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