Originally Posted by Murrays
I used to ride a leather saddle 25 years ago, if fact, I did RAGBRAI wearing cutoffs on a leather saddle! I have a question though, doesn't a leather saddle allow your sit bones to sink in allowing pressure to be distributed to more "sensitive" areas? This would be detrimental according to everything I've read and experienced lately. -murray
Good point Murry; while true the saddle does show indents where your sit bones are but it also breaks into your anatomy of your undercarriage. It works the same way with leather shoes; when you first wear a pair of brand new leather shoes your feat hurt for a short while untill your FOOT breaks in the leather then they fell like your wearing glove. If you instead bought a pair of plastic or carbon fiber shoes this break in would never occur, thus your foot would have to do the breaking in which will take a very long time if ever to get real comfortable. When the Brooks leather breaks in with indents made your actually putting less stress on your sensitive areas but because it has also broken into that area as well by distrubuting the weight better over more saddle area. This is why the majority of long distance bicycle touring people use Brooks (especially the B17) over any other saddle on the market.
As with any saddle (or chair for that matter) you can't just sit on if for hours on end, you need to get up off the saddle about every 10 minutes or so for about a minute or two to get the blood flowing again. But over all the Brooks is the best for the sensitive area.