Slow Bikes and Fast Bum Shorts

The Most Useful Birthday Present EVER


This is my prized purple Mongoose. Lance gave it to me. Lance has given me many useful gifts over the years, many that I still have and use all the time, like my first set of nice Lagostina cooking pots. Lance gave me this bike for Christmas in about 1994. I think he sold his first carbon fibre bike frame in order to buy it for me and I clearly remember how he surprised me by hauling it onto our king sized water bed on Christmas morning. I think that at the time, Lance figured we might get some mountain biking in, but I don't think he could have foreseen just how useful this bike would be.



I have probably logged more miles on this bike than any other bike I have ever owned. This would be owing partly to the fact that I've owned this bike longer than any other bike, and unlike my sponsored Cervelo and Orbea racing bikes, you just don't replace your beater bike every year; then it wouldn't be the beater bike.


It's an ordinary old 35 pound mountain bike with great heavy fenders and a cool bell. I can tow kids on it, and I can ride it in the rain, and I can tool around town with it. I can hop on and off trails, and I can ride it to school with Maia (though she really hates it when I show up in my spandex and colourful jerseys. "Why can't you dress normal, like the other mums?"). I rode it when I was pregnant because I could stay safely on bike paths, and I used it post childbirth as the position is easy on my back. It doesn't get flats and although they are getting old now, it has enough gears to get me up and down hills without too much stress.


Today I rode my 35 pound beast for one whole hour and forty five minutes. My longest ride since Ironman Canada last summer. My purple Mongoose is now the Official Bike of my Knee Injury Rehabilitation, and until I can ride several 2hour pain free rides, I won't even think of getting on my carbon fibre Orbea. If I get on my road bike, then likely I will feel too much like an athlete again, and will try to train, instead of the spinning and strength therapy that riding is fulfilling right now.



Back when I was a 3000m runner I used to train with a woman who fluctuated wildly between being one of the fastest runners in the world, and so injured she would get fantastically out of shape. We always knew she was back in racing shape when her racing suits came out of storage. We called our skimpy little racing shorts 'bum shorts' and for the information of the bikini wearing triathlon masses, track and field athletes have been competing in public in bathing suits for years.


I realize I feel the same way about my mountain bike



I can ride incognito on my mountain bike; meaning other road cyclists don't feel they have to compete with me, as all they see is this nerdy purple bike with a 40 year old woman motoring along. I am left in peace to ride and enjoy the scenery, concentrate on form and getting my leg better. So far so good.





Lucy