In the past few months, I've had a problem of achy legs on rides of 65 miles and up. (shorter rides, no problem) The achy would start out very slight and get worse as the miles added up. By the time I'm about 25 miles from home on the return trip, it would be bad enough where I wouldn't want to push at all and every hill and rise meant the granny gear and 4 mph. Upon reaching home, the achy was completely gone in a few minutes. Also, massaging the calves and quads during the ride helped a lot for a while but soon the achy is back no matter how easy I went.

Last week, I experimented with the seat height just out of curiosity, starting from the highest where the hips would rock while pedaling, then lowering little by little just to the point there was no more hip rocking. This comfortable position was 3/4" higher than the initial height.

After several short test rides of 30-40 miles with the new seat height, it felt great, a little more power all around, especially on hills. It also felt like the aerobic capacity got a bit higher. A definite improvement.

So, decided to go on that long 90 mile ride this weekend and was absolutely thrilled! no achy legs whatsoever for the first time, not the slightest and was able to stand and jam those hills and flats hard til I got home with energy to spare, could have gone over a century easy. (Nothing else done different except the saddle higher even same routes)

Question. What do you suppose caused that terrible achy with the lower seat height? could it be because the muscles can now "stretch" out and refresh on each stroke?

It's still unbelievable to me how 3/4" made that much difference.

Thanks for reading, Perhaps this can help other riders with similar problems.

knotty