Saddles! Saddles!
 

My main weekend roadbike has a vintage Selle Italia Flite Ti saddle. Normally feels fine, but on a century ride this summer, by 80 miles it hurt. A lot.

The LBS looked at the wear marks on my commuter roadbike saddle, which is an old school Selle Italia Turbo. That saddle is comfortable for 100 mile rides. They said the marks show I need a saddle wider than the Flite.

So, in the last week, I've picked up three saddles to try. A Fizik Arione ($30 lightly used), a Fizik Anatares (rather beat up, traded for it), a Selle Italia SLR Flow (a big cut out and Ti rails, $20 brand new).

Woo hoo! I intend to spend the coming weeks taking an unseemly interest in my rear end.

Other saddles I use and like are Brooks B17 and Swift, the already mentioned Selle Italia Turbo, Selle San Marco Concor. The Brooks are awfully heavy, though.

What saddles do you like?. Can you ride a wide range of saddle, or are you only comfortable on a few types?

I like a leather saddle. I like Brooks/Gyes.

They're heavy but the shortcoming of their weight is more than made up for by their comfort!

Over a long distance ride, that matters.

I'm only comfortable on one very specific type, which is not leather. On the right saddle I can ride 24 hours. For me, that's a long ride.

Jeez, i can't even stay awake for 24 hours.

I've been through a few..... I have a carbon roadie and a Trek 520 touring bike.

On the touring bike, I had the original stock saddle (which I hated), then switched to a Brooks B-17. Took the brooks on a cross-country after break-in, and it felt fine, but after a few 100-mile-plus days in a row, I began to feel somt of its shortcomings (namely, after one particularly long day, significant numbness in my perineal area). Anyway, I ended up putting the Brooks on my wife's vintage Raleigh Mixte - she loves it and it looks very cool after my rebuild.

Current tourer is a Selle SMP TRK. Great perineal gap, wide enough for long-distance comfort, shaped so that I can change positions for speeds and conditions, and be comfortable all day.

And now for my roadie:
1. Original Masi saddle - 142, kind of padded but not extensively, pretty good saddle but not something I loved. But it works very well for a stock saddle.
2. Switched out for a WTB Pure Race. Decent, but again, not the sweet spot.
3. Went for a Selle Italia Qik (?). Okay, but cutout wasn't what I expected and the shape wasn't quite to my liking.
4.Finally, I tried a Selle SMP Extra (basically the same as the SMP TRK, but only 140 width. This one is a keeper. I do 40-50 milers a couple times a week, it is comfy for those as well as shorter fitness runs (25-mile fast cruise and in-the-drops).

I still love my B17 and maybe I can just adjust it a bit, but now that my wife owns it I dare not try and confiscate. But bottom line, my Selle SMP's seem to be best for me for most conditions.

Yes thick leather saddles are heavy , so you just look at plastic base and padded , with a thin Pleather cover ..

Really its between your arse and the saddle , not a popularity question ..

80 out of 100 miles you have been sitting down too long. nothing will be comfortable forever in a day.

I will have made a Pub stop and had lunch in that time ..

The list: SI Turbo(80s) SM Rolls , SM Concor Max (not reintroduced since then)

and the Brooks Professional .. to cut weight they now sell a Titanium frame model .

around town Fizik Vitesse , CP3 another discontinued one. the HP is thinner padded , the base edge can be felt..

I'm up at 4:30 am every morning rarin' to go! Then 'long about 9:00 am it's time for my nap. :)

The Arione and the SLR Flow might work. I'd lean toward the Italia because it's shaped more like your old Turbo. I think you'll find the Concor and Antares too narrow and too short.

I'd find a Trek or Specialized shop that has one of those simple pelvic measuring devices and get measured, just to get a general idea of your size. Like you, I loved my old Turbo, but my current favorites are the Selle Italia Flite 1990 reissue and the Bontrager Serano SL in the medium 138mm width.

I had a Selle Italia Turbo also and it was good for about 40 miles. I concluded I needed a wider saddle and migrated to Specialized saddles which come in various widths for the same model and have the cutout. I like wide under the sit bones but narrow at the front - sort of T shaped. I've lost a bit of weight and found I needed to readjust saddle tilt. I'm amazed how minute changes effect comfort

I had been riding on a Selle Italia Flite on my F8 without issue for about a year. For some unknown reason I started to develop perineal pain. Even though it has a cutout I concluded it didn't extend far enough to the nose of the saddle. I replaced it with a Sele Smp Glider Carbon Rail. I've been on it for a little over two months with rides up to 75 miles and so far I love it. Wider longer channel and the nose down tilt feels nice in the drops.
I have a fi'zi:k Arione on my TCR which I will most likely leave as is.

I sympathize with the desire to use a lightweight saddle on your weekend go-fast bike, but if you're going to ride for many hours, comfort is more important. My favorite saddle is the B17. Everything else is a compromise.

Fizik saddles are torturous for me.

I've done 18 hour rides with lightweight saddles. Not a compromise, rather the only thing that's comfortable for me. Brooks saddles work for some, not for all. I haven't been comfortable on either Fizik or Specialized saddles, but they're not the only saddles made . . .

The Flite is a saddle that has been around for many years and has gone through several iterations of revision. I avoided it for a few years because it looked too much like the stock saddle on my Felt F5, a saddle I hated from the start. I finally tried one, the 1990 reissue, after a week of riding on a Fizik Alliante that chafed my butt so badly that I had to quit for a week. I determined that I needed side skirts, and this one had 'em.

Trek gave me a Serano about a year ago, and I like that one too. Can't decide which I like better.

I didn't say other saddles are bad for others. They're just not my favorite.

Being a gear tinkerer by genetic predisposition, I tinker and customize with almost all gear. It may be that after trying a number of different saddles, a good and workable one will be found. Then again, hundreds of dollars could flow out trying different saddles with no success at all. I have found, for me anyway, that too much padding becomes uncomfortable on longer rides. Very little padding is also uncomfortable. I now use a worked over saddle where I've removed some padding under the sitbone area and most of the padding further forward.

Furthermore, my position has altered in the last year and a half and 5000 miles or so. I now sit with the saddle quite far back, the bar further forward and slightly lower with the result that there is less weight and little discomfort on hands as well on the saddle itself. This is all due to the compulsion to tinker with what was not too bad to begin with. It demonstrates to me how integrated position, comfort and power delivery are. I'm not a powerful cyclist so every bit of help I can get is needed.

So ya'll wanna ride a plastic saddle to save weight, but then you need the padded shorts to make the plastic tolerable .....the weight is the same.

Go wear your diapers.....

So far, the Fizik Arione is doing very nicely for me. But my longest ride has been 20 miles. Getting cold here, lack of feeling in my fingers and painful ears are restricting my rides more than saddle issues.

And daylight hours, too, I imagine. Do you take 80 mile rides before March or April?

Not so much . . . has been raining non stop here lately.

I just installed a Brooks Flyer (B17 with springs). I have not yet had the chance for a long ride, but my commute experience yesterday was sweet.

I do. We've been doing 45 miles on the weekends so far, but that will increase in January when we start our winter training series. That ends with a century toward the end of February.

I don't get cold hands, feet, ears, etc., as long as I don't ride more than 5 hours in the rain below 36°. Those conditions are really rare, so I don't have to go snowshoeing on very many weekend days. I can spend 15 hours on my bike with my plastic saddle and padded shorts just fine, just not at this time of year. 7-8 hours is plenty.

I own a Fizik Antares, a Selle Italia Flite Ti, and a Selle Italia Turbo, as my 3 non-tensioned leather saddles. My 3 tensioned leather seats are a Brooks Swift Ti, an Ideale 80 and an Ideale 90. I can tell you that both Selle Italia seats are very comfortable for 25-35 miles, and then become progressively less so. The Fizik Antares is never tremendously comfy, but it doesn't seem to get worse on longer rides. For Long rides, it's got to be one of the 3 leather saddles.

I just swapped the saddles on my newly acquired De Rosa (which came with a Selle Italia Flite Titanium Genuine Gel) and my Trek Y-Foil, which had been wearing the Brooks Swift Titanium. My Y-Foil is my lightest, fastest bike, but I just about never ride it more than 30-35 miles at a time, because my hands get numb using the brifters on it. I can already see that my De Rosa is going to be the bike I take on longer rides, and I found that the Selle Italia saddle is really comfortable for around 30 miles, but then I start to feel pressure points on it. The Brooks Swift, like my two Ideale leather saddles, is comfortable for as long as I want to sit on it. It weighs about 5 ounces more than the Selle Italia, but now I feel like the synergy between the saddles and the bikes they are on is perfect. The Selle Italia being lighter on the lighter faster bike, but the Brooks being a perfect match for a 30 year old steel steed.