I just got through checking all of my biking and tri books, and I can’t find anything on this subject, that is, the effect of rot smell and funk sweat, during very long biking sessions. I was shocked Friel and Gordo and Dan don’t have a piece on this.
It demands to be addressed.
I just got back this morning from riding about 60 miles down here on a bike. I normally ride about 30 miles several times a week and have never, ever noticed “THE ROTT” (Body Funk), but a friend of mine invited us up to ride these loops out in the middle of the country, and, finally, I found my “ROTT” milage number, which was, I think, 53 miles, that being the mile where the smell of body funk is all pervasive, for every four breaths, one is a “ROTT” breath. I would think, at say, Mile 100, every three breaths, would be body “ROTT” breaths.
Anyway, having never gone this far, I had never really smelled or smelled others biking that long. I think there’s a number for everyone. Maybe its mile 75 for you. Maybe you don’t have glands. Maybe, right when you start off, on mile 7, you are Mr. Rott Guy or Gal. I don’t know.
You can take as many showers as you want before hand, but the sweat, and overall “rott” smell, seems to me, to be just as much as a race factor at some point, than “riding up a steep hill,” for example. Throw a few more guys into the mix, and, it really becomes just as much as a biking problem, as say, trying to mountain bike through a city landfill. You can easily tell who had beers that night before, and who is wearing cologne or antipersperant with scent. That stuff doesn’t disguise ass rot, and whatever else is pouring through the skin.
Then you’ve got to pee, and there’s probably some jingling and stuff on the side of the road, but it’s not like you are wiping up in the bathroom. So, a few drops, probably linger on that pad there, and then I bet that starts stinking; so, that’s going on, too.
Some of you bike plus 70-80 a lot during the week. God bless you, you stinkers.