Originally Posted by
DropBarFan
Congrats on the tour! Just curious--what saddle did you use? I used to ride 300+ km/week, didn't do much stretching. I think that on a long tour the fitness level goes up & the effort becomes routine. But now my riding schedule is erratic & on longer day rides I get some fatigue & tightness so stretching helps. I guess there can be a psychological/physiological letdown after a long tour but constant pain & sleep difficulty sounds pretty serious.
I have a Brooks B-17 on my touring bike, on my mountain bike, and 2 on the tandem. The one on the touring bike had probably 2000 kilometres (1200 miles) on it when I left. It now has nearly 10,000 kilometres (6,000 miles). Uber comfortable. For me and my wife, they have been comfortable out of the box. As far as pain and not sleeping well, I've done nothing as far as physical activity i.e. biking, weight lifting, aerobics, since I have returned from my tour. I have worked in the yard and garden quite a bit though-so doing stuff my body is not used to, so that is partly the problem. The other part is probably our bed. We bought a Temperpedic a few months before I left on tour. We should have gotten a sleep number bed, in retrospect. It would be easier to match the comfort of sleeping on an air mattress in a tent. In fact, my dad was just telling me last week that their sleep number bed is 20 years old this year, and they still love it. I slept so well on tour, now if I could just convince my wife to ride with me a 100 kms a day.......