Adventures in Hooville

Not since seeing the Vagina Monologues have I ever become as well educated on the travesties of women's hoohoos as I have since being on a women's cycling team. Over the winter there was minor talk here and there about the discomfort that comes with endless miles, but that was all eclipsed by the eye openers at the Walla Walla stage race last month. After the first day of racing, one of our racers had such an injured hoohoo that she had to shove a bag of ice down her pants to relieve the pain and swelling of her precious jewels (oh if I only had a picture of that today!). She iced it again the next morning before the crit, but was only able to do a few laps of the race until her hoohoo cried uncle. All the teammates offered their advice and suggestions, but it was too late, no amount of lube or ice was going to make that hoohoo happy again.

The weird thing is these aren't novice bike riders here, each woman has tens of thousands of miles under her spandex, but they still experience the pain every female cyclist can relate to: the swelling, the numbness, the not-so-pleasurable sensation of pressure in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sure the "anatomical" saddles provide relief for a small number of the population, but get real, sometimes they act more like a cheese slicer. Give me my Brooks any day.

What is it that causes such torture? My first guess would be bike fit. If your pelvis is at the wrong angle it can put too much pressure on your hoohoo (this is what we're thinking happened at Walla Walla, she'd had a new bike fit a few weeks before). Second would be the saddle type and position. Most women think the cushier the saddle, the better, but actually it's the opposite. A firmer saddle will support the seat bones properly (ever wonder why Brooks are so popular?). That's where the weight and pressure should be, not on the jewels. With a cushier saddle, your seat bones will melt into its gel or foam and put increased pressure on the exact place you're trying to protect. I recently bought the Specialized Women's Jett saddle and it was a revelation in new seat technology. It's a fancy carbon and ti saddle, but very solid and with 3 different widths to choose from to support those different ancestral-cursed seat bones. For the first time, I think someone actually designed an anatomical seat properly. It perfectly supported my seat bones only, and not the delicate tidbits in between.

Some racers will say the hoohoo issue just comes with the territory and it makes you tougher. One local chickee calls her "the leather labia." OUCH. In the movie "2 Seconds" you get an idea of how it feels to do a few hundred miles and be so numb that nothing your partner does in bed will bring the poor nubben back to life.

And so the adventure continues for women who love bikes a little too much. We ride, we race, we endure.