Shiny Short Adventures

As you may remember, when I crashed on the road doing some pre-Lumberjack sprints back in June, my first thought as I was sliding down the road was not about how I was getting hurt before the big race, but about how I was destroying my good pair of bibs. When I got home from the crash, I showed the holes to Adam and expressed my dismay. He said, "Can't you just get a new pair?"

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your local team keeps a full stock of extra kits year-round and they just happen to be stored at your shop. Not so easy for me. While Louis Garneau makes fabu-tastic bibs for the Velo Bella team, they are quite hard to obtain. We haven't had a full team clothing order since January 2008, and there probably weren't that many extra pairs of bibs, anyway. Unless there is some obscure black market of which I am unaware, I'm out of luck until the next order. (Pilfered ivory? No. Cocaine? No. Human kidney? No. Velo Bella bibs, size medium? YES!!!) The crash taught me an important lesson about buying extras (and maybe some extras to scalp later).

So after six weeks of riding around in holey-butt shorts, I finally decided to break down and buy a pair of plain bibs to train in until the next team order. I still have one pair of VB bibs from 2007, but are definitely showing their age, so I'm trying to ration their remaining usability. One side effect of this is that I've begun thinking of even more excuses to wear my short-sleeved skinsuit, which is still in great condition, to more races.

The problem is that I've yet to find a pair of non-team bibs that I don't hate. I was pleasantly surprised when I tried out Boure's bib tights and knickers last winter, so I decided to get their summer bibs a shot. They are okay, but not as good as the LG's. Mostly, they are shiny. See them sparkle in the sunlight on my ride last night:

Last night I had a two-hour ride with 2 x (2 x 1 min.), then finish out the time in Zone 2. I did my intervals on a short steep hill right outside of town and then continued out Old 37 to do my Robinson Rd. loop backwards. As I was heading down the fire station hill and riding all swervy while I tried to get my shiny-short chamois settled, I must have encountered at least 20 cyclists, at least half of whom I knew, in about a half-mile. For some reason, I found myself a little embarrassed, as if I wanted to say, "Hey guys, I don't always wear the uncomfortable shiny-shorts on road rides; it's just something new I'm trying." Of course, I'm sure no one even noticed my shiny-shorts. I'm probably just self-conscious.