Hi there,

I've been a casual cyclist for several years now; rarely do I ride more than 400 kilometers in a month. Since I live in beautiful Taiwan, I like to go touring as often as I can; my longest tour was a 1200-km trip around the island in April 2008. Next month I'm taking my bike to Hokkaido for a 26-day vacation, but I'm worried it might not be much fun because recently I've been having some pain down below, if you know what I mean.

I'm a 6'2", 180-pound 29-year-old guy, and I ride a fairly inexpensive Giant mb/hybrid that looks like this. Usually I ride 40-70 kilometers per ride, although when I'm touring I sometimes break 120 km per day. My saddle is more padded than the saddles of most serious cyclists; in fact, on my old bike (which got stolen in October 2008) I had a gel pad I put over the saddle to make it more comfortable. My butt would hurt after a day or two of 100-km rides, but it was nothing serious.

Lately, however, I've been having some nasty pain in both front and back. When I peed after the 45-km ride I did tonight, it hurt a lot, and I noticed that the area around the pee-hole was red and inflamed, which has never happened before. Also, even though I wear high-end Santini bib shorts to protect my rear end, my anus feels slightly torn after rides to the point that it hurts when I shower. Sorry for being graphic, but there it is.

I can't imagine this is normal. Has anyone out there ever had similar problems? What did you do about it? I suppose I could buy another gel pad to put over the saddle, but everything I've read about this says that firmer saddles are actually better for longer rides. Or I could get a saddle with a bigger center cut (like the San Marco Mantra, unfortunately out of my price range at the moment), or even a noseless saddle, although I don't know where I could find one in Taiwan. I'll do just about anything to fix this problem before my big Hokkaido tour! Thanks so much for reading this.