Hi Tony,
Welcome to CycleChat!
My data seems to fly in the face of accepted science.
Riding the very same dozen DIY perms each year (eventually saves on stopping to look at the map) over twenty-one years, I have amassed a comprehensive spreadsheet on time vs distance, all in various states of hirsuitedness.
If you have Excel, I can send over the files, but they are rather large. I’ve accounted numerically for wind speed; calories; tyres; which spectacles I was wearing; clothing; relative humidity etc. Other, non-algebraic columns include: facial hair - washed or clean; facial hair - natural or waxed; unaccompanied or with soigneur; unmedicated or lisdexamfetamine etc.
Years 1-9 I was clean shaven, facially.
Years 10 - 17 I had a beard of average length 300 mm, but shaved my cheeks, facially.
Years 18 - 21 I had the same beard, but added a full handlebar moustache, facially (yes, I am witheringly handsome now, and my personality is far more engaging)
In brief, then, my analysis, once sieved through some referenced and verified median datasets from analysts
HERE, shows clearly that my fastest cycling has been achieved when fully haired of face. I would go further, and state that having a big waxed crescent of glistening manliness on your top lip gives you all the dash and elan needed to “shave off”: many seconds from each metre ascended on gradients steeper than 1:13; many minutes and microns of brake block rubber on descents longer than 1425 yards and of declines greater than five eighths of an inch per foot travelled; countless hours put aside for personal grooming won on the flat, on those gruelling sections of randonnees where the bald-faced peloton simply falls away under the weight of ennui and ordinariness of visage.
When the UCI finally comb through my findings, I can guarantee you the sports moustache will be de rigeur, then commonplace, then finally banned. Just like the French Beak, the Nordic Thigh and Cerume di Italia. You read it here first, Tony.
Kind regards,
R. Nerd
edit: unmediated became unmedicated
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