The Fatslayer Chronicles

I’ve been doing a lot of cycling lately, because – gasp – I actually enjoy it! I like the fact that I can just don the shorts-of-shame, hop on my trusty steed, and cover around 15 miles of beautiful English countryside in a little over an hour. I can cover so much distance, and with a following wind it’s almost like flying – I feel more free and vibrant and alive on a bike than at any other time. Last night I was out for an hour and because I was whizzing along on the bridleways hardly making a sound I saw hares, rabbits, foxes, otters, a few deer, a couple of herons and a man with a huge penis peeing up a tree. (Yes, I looked. He was embarrassed. Serves him right. Heh, heh.).  I felt at one with nature, and nearly stopped to hug a tree (but didn’t in case the tree-pisser had got there first) – no other sport makes me feel so damn good about myself and life in general.

But as with all good things, there’s a drawback. Despite my women’s-specific gel-filled anatomical saddle with pressure-relieving cutaways and my state-of-the-art 10 panel cool wicking cycling shorts, I’m getting so bloody saddlesore it’s beyond a joke. Jeeze, we’re talking actual bruising here of my – ahem – tender bits, and I’m walking around so bandy legged from the pain that I’m beginning to resemble a freshly deflowered virgin at a sexaholics convention.

I was expecting to have hardened up by now and become all leathery and tough down below (ahem again – sorry K!), but the more miles I rack up, the sorer I seem to get. Its torture, I tell you, torture! Having read about Carrie’s nipple woes and her success with lettuce, I was tempted to see if that would provide me with any relief – or if lettuce didn’t work, then cucumber slices, cold teabags, pro-biotic yoghurt, chilled jelly (jell-o to you American readers) or all the other things that old wives advise you to put on eyelids and other puffy or inflamed parts of the female anatomy. Sadly, though, my shorts are way too tight to allow the insertion of anything other my big fat arse, and I also couldn’t really work up any enthusiasm for squelching along with a crotchful of yoghurt, jelly, tea-leaves or cucumber pulp – my shorts already make me look as if I’m wearing a filled nappy, without feeling like I’m wearing one too!

Fifteen years ago I used to cycle to work and back every day on a rattling old bone-shaker with no chamois shorts liner, and I didn’t have half as much trouble as I’m having at the moment, so I’m wondering whether it’s my excess weight pressing down on my pubic bone that’s causing all the problems. If so, there’s light at the end of the tunnel – in a year’s time I’ll be at goal, and maybe I’ll be able to have sex again. Whatever the reason, I’m not going to be beaten, and I WILL toughen up…but in the meantime sex is well and truly off the agenda, and I’m reduced to sitting on bags of frozen peas after every ride until I get the hang of this damn bloody bike riding business.