Maximum Bob

“Nothing left to the imagination.”

It all dates back to when I hit puberty. I’ve been asked to clarify a certain matter concerning men’s undergarmentry, so here is a warning: what you are about to read may contain explicit reference to the male bollock.

I was svelte and fit and I could run and run and run. I was renowned for my endurance: could run laps of the school playground forever, leaving everyone in my wake. And then I hit puberty, and you know that period of time teenagers go through when they just want to sleep all day and come over all lethargic with no energy? That was me, till the end of time.

I couldn’t run anymore, had no strength in my legs. Perhaps it was the mononucleosis, who knows? I’ve struggled ever since to get into any kind of sporting activity. Older readers may remember that I do try to keep up with the old cycling. I’ve got a bike, it’s not a great one, but I’m not about to blame the machinery. I go out on my bike, and in the summer I try to do so every day that it isn’t actually blowing a gale or pissing down with rain, but it never leads to any palpable feeling of fitness.

My legs don’t seem to grow stronger, my endurance doesn’t get longer, I don’t seem to get any faster. Every ride is as hard as the first. I’ve done the puff test, and I have the lung capacity of a fit 19-year-old. Unfortunately, I have the body of an unfit 44-year-old. I’m a nippy 1-litre engine in a great big old Mercedes body. Somewhere inside me is the pre-adolescent who could run all day.

Occasionally, I am humiliated by old men on racing bicycles who overtake me on the county lanes and leave me floundering behind. Honestly, I’m beyond even trying to keep up: there is no ego left to even want to try. Luckily, it doesn’t happen too often, or I’d never be able to endure the punishment. Happened today, going up a hill. I was clanking clumsily into a lower gear and he just breezed past and was out of sight within a minute. *Sob*

The only signs in any of this that cycling is actually doing anything for me are my thighs. They are, as a result of the regular exercise, like the proverbial tree trunks. Not a 200-year-old oak, I hasten to add. More of a 30-year-old silver birch.

So I have these muscular upper thighs that still have no power/strength and don’t do anything towards making me feel fitter or stronger. What they do provide, though, is an unfortunate side effect which has to do with my private bits.

If I walk anywhere for any length of time, chafing takes place around the base of my bollocks. On one memorable occasion, I walked so far and for so long, and in such excruciating pain, that I had a nasty welt that persisted for a couple of weeks before finally (with much application of as many creams as I could find) healing. I was walking bow-legged for days on end.

Boxer shorts, it seems, were part of the problem. Boxers allow too much freedom of movement, and, er, relaxation on warm days. You know what I’m talking about. So I have had to switch to more restricting underwear. Briefs were out of the question. So I’m trying trunks. Seems better. Not my kind of thing, but sweet relief nevertheless.

p.s. I don’t think my wife quite realises just how horribly humiliating it is to be overtaken by a senior on a cycle. She just laughs when I tell her. It’s not that I am competitive and want to race: I just want to feel fitter. My day was completed today when I swallowed an insect shortly after being overtaken. Tried to retch it up, but had to swallow it in the end: it was that or vomit.