Originally Posted by
Kojak
No studies or "official" references. Having been an active and avid rider, racer, commuter, I do have a bit of experience in this area.
Most of the people I know who have saddle issues are casual riders, and never spend the time (ride the miles) to acclimate their points of contact with their saddle. They ride once or twice, their undercarriage gets sore, and they proclaim: "My saddle is uncomfortable".
Some people actually have wider or narrower than "normal" sit bones. A good bike fit person can make this determination, and then recommend an appropriate saddle.... of course they have to get kind of up close and personal with your nether regions to do the measuring.
If one doesn't want to take my word for it, perhaps Sheldon Brown's wisdom would be more acceptable.
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/saddles.html
Sheldon does state that a good tensioned leather saddle (Brooks) will "break-in" over time, but again, someone actually has to put in enough time in the saddle to make this happen. I have ridden many kinds of saddles over the past 20+ years, and the only time I have ever had a problem was doing too many miles on early season rides. Now that I ride year round, I can jump from saddle to saddle and not have any issues.
Guy,
Thank you for the pointer to Sheldon Brown - GRHS, I missed that and it was interesting - Sheldon's work is always a good reference.
My experience from reading peoples experiences as posted on this site are a little different than what you stated, as you stated, if the sit bones don't fit the saddle the saddle will never fit the sit bones and be comfortable - on that the data seems to agree. However on the second point, most people can be comfortable on most saddles does not agree, many people here seem to need the right saddle.
Also - one thing you may not be aware of, Specialized has what has been called the ass-o-meter which measures sit bones so they can be matched to the right width saddle.
As for me, as you suggest I seem to be pretty tolerant of saddles, but what I found recently though with a bike I could never get comfortable, my tail would hurt after 4 hours riding using 4 different saddles (including one that worked well on another one of my bikes) - I found it a 20mm shorter stem solved the problem.