Saddle sores...

Seing as there is not much to report about our long days through the rolling hills of Iowa, I'll resort to a short rambling on everyone's favorite sbject: saddle sores. Please, only read on if you are not negaively affected by graphic descriptions of "private" matters.

One of the most painful experiences that a cyclist can endure isn't always a result of a bad crash, but rather is often due to saddle sores. For a more complete description of this term, please check the following site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_sores. The frequency and seriousness of saddle sores is obviously increased when one spends increasing amounts of time on the road. Therefore, on a 9-week tour, this becomes an extremely important issue! Most of us combat this potential problem through the use of products such as bag balm, udder butter or even vaseline - really anything slimey will do the trick! Nevertheless, regardless of your product of choice, not even the professional cyclist is immune. Case and point, I struggled with this issue thrugh parts of week 3 and 4. I'll spare you the details, but I will say that I was grateful for the amount of hills we had which required me to be up out of the saddle! You'll be happy to know that everything down under has healed quite nicely and with the addition of my aero-bars I now have another position available for my beehind on my saddle.

Sorry if this may have caused you to lose your appetite, but this is a fact of life that we cyclists deal with on a regular basis, and I thought this might give you a better insight into my daily joys and struggles of life in the saddle!

ps. no pictures will be posted on this subject, lest they be circulated around the Pentagon on the basis that they were somehow mistaken for blown up images of WMDs in Iraq... (this is for the Arrested Development fans out there!)