Self Massage

Sounds naughty, doesn't it.

Up till now, I haven't fully been on board with the whole massage thing. I mean, it seems like it's for prissy men or pro cyclists; I don't consider myself either. The epiphany came right after the ride today, as I was preparing for my shower. I remembered an article I read somewhere that said that leg massages for cyclists should be done by doing a "smoothing" action from the bottom of the muscle (closest to the foot) and moving up the leg towards the heart. So I did this a little bit. Lo and behold, some of the soreness from today's ride went away!

Discovering this, I reasoned that this would be more effective after my shower and leg shave, and with some lotion so the massage motions won't burn the skin. After showering and shaving, I did the massage on my quads and calf muscles... and no more soreness! Beautiful. Not that I'm not still a little tired from the ride, but the soreness is gone. And it's something that will be imminently helpful considering I have a stage race coming up in a week, where getting the soreness out of my legs as soon as one day's stage is over might be considered important.

It also really highlights one of the reasons why competitive cyclists shave their legs. The self massage isn't a full "pro" massage by any means, but it certainly feels better without hair on the legs. So, two mysteries of competitive cycling: massage and shaving, I now better understand.