Going with the Flow

WARNING: This blog post, in particular, contains information and opinions about certain female bodily functions that is almost guaranteed to offend at least 50% of the population, especially those of the male persuasion. Yes, it's about THAT. If THAT offends you or does not provoke chuckles of sympathy you are hereby warned to STOP READING NOW. I MEAN NOW!

I have a medium Chamartín jersey and a small one. The small one is, effectively, toast after the fall I took in Tres Olivos last week. The medium isn't really all that medium, more like a North American small, but what it does have is three nice, big pockets that allow me to carry what I need for the day: wallet, cell phone, iPod, gel and food, packet of tissues. And a Tampax. The pockets are big enough that I can fit a regular (read: paper-wrapped...the girls will know what I mean...) Tampax in there, sideways, which stretches the jersey a little but usually secures it in place. All of us end up looking a little bit like backwards kangaroos with the quantity of stuff we can stuff into our jerseys, but it makes it a lot less cumbersome than a CamelBak.

From time to time, a dead (always unused, always green for Super) Tampax will mysteriously appear at the side of the bike path, especially up around the M30 bridge, and I always feel bad for its former owner. Dollars to donuts, the owner of that little green bullet of relief is going to have a hell of a shock when she needs to stop. She'll scootch into the bathroom, trying hard not to walk funny in order not to let on that anything's up (which is a lie unto itself -what normal woman bolts into a bathroom while trying to grip her butt and Kegel muscles, as if she were an Olympic speed walker?). She'll slam the door shut, turn the light on, unzip, pull down, sit down, be annoyed at the stain (or relieved at the lack thereof) and reach into a pocket, hoping to feel that reassuring polychemical crinkle of the plastic, only to come up empty-handed. Oh. No. And with cycling being such a male-dominated sport, it's not like you can stick your head out of the loo, glance at your sisters-in-arms with that specific look of panic on your face (while still trying to hide the rest of your body behind the bathroom door) and hiss, "Does anyone have....ONE?" No sir.

WARNING TO THE SENSITIVE: We are getting into the genuinely gross stuff now. If your sensibilities might still be at risk, stop reading and go watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMAJf-hf1Zk

....or this, if the kids are around: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHeGX0wqazs.
(Don't ask me why the Ting Tings made a Yo Gabba Gabba video, but it's strangely engaging.)

My sister-in-law used to call it "dropping a clot". It is NOT a pleasant feeling: it's the feeling of being out of control, of being held captive to something you didn't ask for and can't stop no matter how hard you try. Well, you can, obviously: that's why we have sanitary products. More insidious, however, is the gentle leak, the one that destroys jeans and expensive underwear, the one that gives no feeling to its existence until you notice that protein-based stickiness and that your undergarments aren't moving the way they normally do.

The one advantage of cycling is that culottes, which usually contain some kind of pad in the genital area, provide the perfect backup. Both men's and women's models are designed to absorb sweat (and whatever other inopportune body fluids may emerge), shocks and friction; so, gentlemen (if any of you are still reading by now), THAT is what it's like to use an Evax/Kotex. (And a Tampax? Well, if you've inserted it the right way and you haven't used on that's too absorbent, it shouldn't really feel like anything.) So if you have an accident when wearing a decent pair of cycling shorts, you're covered in the short-term. Nothing that a handful of salt and some stain remover can't take care of later.

Provided, of course, that the flow is, uh, NORMAL. And you can't control that.

I don't really notice anything until Colmenar Viejo. No gloppy burning sensations, no lower-back pain, nothing out of the ordinary. But I do feel the call of nature, which isn't surprising considering I refilled (and drank) two bottles of water before leaving Madrid. I decide to stop at the Miratoros restaurant in Soto del Real, get a quick coffee, eat a home-made PowerBar and then head off to do what's gotta be done - ride up to Miraflores, down to Guadalix, beat the hell out of San Pedro and get home before it gets too hot outside to even think. The guys in the Miratoros are pretty used to us making pit stops there. As long as you buy something, they don't care.

Coffee. Pay. Bathroom. Culottes down. Damn. Leakage. Reach behind.....

Uh-oh.

It's not there.

Left pocket: iPod, gel, two PowerBars. Middle pocket: wallet and house keys. Right pocket: phone.

Oh CRAP. What now??

And no, gents (if any of you are STILL reading), stuffing a handful of TP between your legs won't cut it. Why not? Go take a handful of TP and rub it against your lips...for the next three hours. You'll get the point.

Ergh.

Okay. Nothing to do but keep on keepin' on.

I blot whatever I can (which is actually a fair bit), pull up, wash my hands and head back out. Not much to do except go like hell and try to get home as soon as possible.

The worst part of accidents like this, however, isn't necessarily the stainage; it's the strange hypersensitivity about the flow that you get once you realize that the flow is underway. All of a sudden, you become convinced that EVERYBODY is aware of what's happening to you. Images of CARRIE start coming to mind (God, are those rain clouds over there??) You become convinced that every wild animal in the north end of the Comunidad -- if there are any left -- will be chasing your sorry ass because you smell like a canapé on wheels. And you're very thankful that you're out by yourself, because if ANY, A-NY of the guys in the club knew of this, you would never have anyone willing to go out with you, ever again ("We don't care if you bleed when you fall and take half your knee off, but....but...THIS??") It's like Grade Seven all over again, except that you don't have the comfort of the silly tampon ads on the back of Seventeen magazine, the pigtailed girl dressed in a white bikini waterskiing with a great huge grin on her face rather than sulking over the picnic basket on the beach. It's like being back in high school gym class and knowing who's been served with a visit from Aunt Flow, because she's taking forever in the bathroom stalls, and doesn't everyone know it, too.

I try beating it like hell up the Cuesta de los Pobres towards Miraflores, which means not going very fast because you've got to climb nearly 200m in less than ten kilometres. Ouch. I stop at the turnoff to Guadalix, try to choke down an energy gel, wash it down with some very hot water (the sun has been beating on the bidones for about three hours by now) and do some mental calculations: it's about fifteen minutes to Guadalix, through the town and up over San Pedro twenty-five minutes later, then go like hell and - ugh. Oh God, there it goes again. What happened to the days when you could just buy emergency three-packs? Why don't they have that here? Why can I buy gum, toothpaste and condoms in vending machines in bars in Spain, but never tampons?

Guadalix is an easy coast downhill from Miraflores, on a highway that really is worth the trouble to ride slowly and enjoy. But I've been down here five or six times before, and besides, there's a bit more of a pressing matter, so I hit the pedals and try to get there as soon as I can. Not a problem, except that two kilometres out of town, I catch the business end of some kind of stinging insect on the right side of my mouth - the side that happens to be coated with ChapStick and leftover PowerBar Caffeinated Apple Gel. I try blowing the insect away. Nothing. I curl my lips back and try to dislodge whatever it is - I'm afraid to look - with the snuffle patch of my right-hand glove. Most of it goes. There's still something left over, something may or may not be stuck in my top lip, and the right-hand side of my mouth is going slightly numb (though that could just as well be the caffeine from the gel.)

Great. Carrie, meet Jean Chrétien.

And then I think something that's not entirely printable, grab the water bottle, give my mouth a blast of hot water, head through Guadalix and just GO. Even if I do have an allergic reaction (and I probably won't), there's nothing I can do about it until I get to Colmenar anyway. More inspiration to get my sorry ass over San Pedro as soon as possible.

San Pedro isn't an impossible climb. The first five kilometres of the M625 leave Guadalix de la Sierra at a gentle, easily beatable 3% grade, before peaking up to 5% or 6% near the Segovia-Valladolid AVE line and reaching 8% in the final bit before the crest of the hill, near the abandoned road workers' hut - so you get a good swing at killing most of the climbing on the relatively flat sections below, before the hurt comes on in the final two kilometres. But I'm not taking any risks. I throw the gears up to the 52x17 and keep my cadence up over 80 so that I'm going at least 28 kilometres per hour, while keeping a steady eye on my heart rate. If there are any weird jumps or increases, I'm gonna head back down to Guadalix and head straight for the Health Centre. I don't know how I'll explain the bleeding (surely THEY would have some Tampax on hand) but I'll figure it out.

The further up I go, the hotter and windier it gets, and the hotter it gets, the stickier it gets from the waist down. All I can hope is that the flow doesn't stop and that there's some dampness there at all times, because when that dries out and seizes up everything down there, I'm in serious trouble and it's gonna be like someone filled my keks with Elmer's Glue.

Luckily, it being Monday, there's very little traffic (they're gonna look at my shorts from behind they're gonna know!!!) which means that I can use more of the road and not stick to just the edges. Then it strikes me that, if anything happens to me, I am going to scare the living SHIT out of any driver who pulls over and takes a look at me from the waist down.

And I pull it off: San Pedro in 21 minutes 15 seconds, beating my old time by exactly 44 seconds. I don't know how much of it is due to sheer brute force or the desire to get the hell home as soon as possible, but screw it, the job is done.

And on the way back down into Madrid, I think about Pete Gerrard, a guy I knew in college who used to quip, after five or six Glenfiddich had gotten the better of his judgement: "How can you trust something that bleeds thirteen times a year and LIVES?" Oh, no, Pete - that's not the question. The question is: How can you trust something that bleeds thirteen times a year, lives, can still beat the hell out of itself and JOKE about it when the day is done? That, gentlemen, is what makes women truly frightening.