Katie Archibald column: In search of the naked truth

I would like to be naked more of the time. I would like it to be ok for me to be naked more of the time, without feeling highly aware of the fact I’m naked. I even feel uncomfortable right now talking about being naked (though not as uncomfortable as my father reading this) and I would like to get rid of that feeling as well.

I don’t mean by changing myself. It’s not my problem that I feel weird if I’ve got no clothes on, the problem is that it is weird if I’ve got no clothes on.

If I share a hotel room with Neah Evans I can be naked in that hotel room whenever I like. When we go home (we live together) I can’t be naked in the living room. And I get that. When Cycling Weekly update my writer’s profile image it’s not going to be a sketch of me in the skud. This isn’t a personal ‘be naked more!’ target I’m setting myself. I’m just annoyed that if I wanted to spend the day in my pants we would have to question my motives.

It’s all on my mind because someone saw me naked yesterday and spent the following eternity (at least a minute) doubled over with laughter. I’m not complaining; I look like a Refresher lolly with some nipples stuck to it at the moment. We’re training in Portugal and I didn’t wear suncream on day one — it was funny. But don’t follow my example kids: skin cancer isn’t funny and you should always wear suncream.

It has started a debate, because last year I found this same team-mate totally naked in some public toilets, and that time it was me suffering crippling laughter. I just wasn’t expecting to see a naked person and the surprise was, for some reason, hilarious. What was slightly cruel was for the rest of the trip, whenever that team-mate was naked again it just reminded me of the original incident and I started laughing all over again. She claims it didn’t do wonders for her self-esteem.

But, and this was our debate, I was only laughing at the actual context of her nakedness. She was laughing at the content of mine. I ask you, who should really have self-esteem issues?