wphamilton

Except that he's 100% correct. When I find myself thinking this way, it's a good mental exercise to examine my assumptions. There is always, at the very least, a conflict with some aspect of the issue that one or other party has neglected.

speshelite

It can, but it doesn't have to. Your situation is easily explained: your saddle doesn't fit as well as it could. I've certainly been in your situation before with my wtb saddles. I was quite sore at the start of a ride, and then "got used to it." Meaning it was still uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as at the start of the ride. Guess what? I found a new saddle and it's very comfortable at the start middle and end of rides. You don't get it. Your saddle doesn't fit very well, you just tolerate it.

You can find it ridiculous or not, it's true. You can find a saddle that causes NO discomfort even after months of not riding. I can't say that I go months without riding, actually but have taken weeks off due to unusual amount of winter rain. You're selling yourself short. Keep looking and you can find a saddle that is comfortable, period.

As far as sheldon, read what he actually wrote. I quoted a portion of it. You will realize that it MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE. You don't "sit harder on the saddle" when your legs tire. That is just stupid.

tl, dr: your saddle fits you poorly and you are using "sheldon brown" as an excuse not to look any further for a saddle that fits properly.

speshelite

False. My saddle does not cause discomfort even when I am tired. And I've gotten very tired on long, steep climbs. But somehow I did not "sit harder on the saddle" when my "legs were tired." So your claim of 100% is false.

speshelite

And this claim of a person never being wrong is lulz. Everyone gets it wrong sometimes. And Sheldon's goofy claims here point to the laziness of some, maybe many people on this forum.

"He's always right" is, well, I want to remain polite so I won't say.

I got it partially or very wrong with at least 10 saddle choices until I finally got it right. But I kept going and found the right saddle for me. It can be done. You don't need to endure an uncomfortable saddle and then rationalize it by saying "duh, Sheldon thaid tho..."

wphamilton

Perhaps you ride a cruiser and never go hard enough for it to make a difference. Or maybe you're a pro who never sits back and takes recovery rides at 200 watts. Either way, your subjective anecdote does not invalidate his correct statement.

For the majority of people, I recommend never getting into the grail-hunt of a perfect saddle, because most people who do and report here about it have gone through 10 or 15 saddles before finding "it", one that matches whatever style of riding they're doing and whatever state of fitness they have at the time. A person's position, even his fitness, and many other factors affect what saddle is preferable, and all of these change over time.

speshelite

False again. This is getting silly. You are just making up fairy tales to protect your false idol Sheldon Brown.

You are changing your argument. First you said he is 100% correct. Now you are saying he is not 100% correct but still 100% correct.

It took me over 10 tries, it's true, but it doesn't have to take the OP over 10 tries. He does have to get a measurement for his sit bones, and that will narrow it down quite a bit. If I had done that I could have eliminated the 155 and 135 saddles I tried and focused on 140-145.

I should also add that this saddle works on all of my bikes (road, mtb, hybrid) and at "varying weights" (ahem).

That's why OP is posting here. He's getting shortcuts based upon our experience and trial and error.

As far as this sheldon worship, I can honestly say he is wrong many times and at least in this instance, his writing is incoherent simply because it is not based either in scientific fact or even anecdotal experience. It's pure jibberish. Is he knowledgeable? How would you know? His writing is at the level of a 7th grader.

jefnvk

Except, that is not at all what I am saying. My first couple rides in the spring generally are a bit sore. Then the soft tissue has reacclimated to sitting in a saddle, and I am good the rest of the season. There is no pain or getting used to it after those first few rides, just on them. The only way that can work without a saddle change is if indeed my bottom needed to harden up a bit, as it is the only thing changing.

I wouldn't start out expecting to ride a century my first ride back on the bike after the winter, I don't know why I'd expect my bottom to retain its conditioning.

Fresh legs keep my seat unloaded the slightest bit, tired ones cause me to put all my weight on the saddle. Maybe that's personal preference, maybe its how its done, maybe I'm doing it wrong, I really don't know, but the advice doesn't sound that ridiculous for how I pedal a bike.

79pmooney

The saddle becoming less comfortable as one tires and puts more weight on it - now that depends on how you ride. If you primarily push down (and there are many who say we all do this or should do this), then as you tire, your quads are doing less work and supporting less weight. In that case, a saddle which sufficed with say 3/4s of your full sitting weight as you ride strong may cease to be comfortable when you add that last 25%.

But if you "spin circles" like was taught by racing coaches years ago, you are putting much of your full sitting weight on the saddle and it changes little as you tire. Now, if you do this, getting the right seat matters far more but you will be glad you found it when you run out of steam and have miles to go.

OP, at 12 miles you haven't begun to get to the point of seeing this. Play with the adjustments as I posted above and if that doesn't work, start looking for a another seat. See if your shop will do loaners until you find the right one. (A shop here in Portland has a "library" with about 25 seats. $25 gets yo a library card. You can take out any seat o the shelves and use it for a week, bring it back and take out another, as manyu times as you wish. Find one you like and your $25 goes toward the purchase (of a new seat - your loaner goes back on the library shelf. Look up Gladys bikes. They focus on women's bikes but their seat selection goes across the board and is excellent.)

Don't give up. The right saddle and comfort is out there. Keep an open mind and observe what works for you. Our butts vary as much as our faces. I know this from riding a long time and observing the seats I and others find comfortable. Every seat out there fits somebody and the the range of seats invented over the past 130 years would blow anybody's mind.

Ben

speshelite

Too bad for you. I don't go through any so called "reacclimation" process. My saddle is comfortable, period.

No they don't. My saddle is comfortable whether my legs are tired or not.

speshelite

See, that's the spirit. So many people give up on finding a comfortable saddle and endure pain. It's completely unnecessary. I do disagree with the implication that finding a great fitting saddle can be an infinite process.

In my instance, I recognized intuitively that a 155 was a bit too wide and found out painfully that 135 or less was way too narrow. However, I chased fads and chose saddles haphazardly by ignoring the key factor: width of sit bones! If I had focused on that point, I could have narrowed my selection down quite a bit.

And great recommendation on asking around for shops who might have loaners.

jefnvk

Good for you, but as you are now presuming to tell me how my body rides a bike, this has passed the point of absurdity. I'm off, apparently to ride my bike wrong

OP, listen to @79pmooney. He has some good advice about adjusting as you go along. All the fit guides in the world can only get you so close, nothing but your final tweaks will dial it in for you.

speshelite

No one's telling you how your body rides a bike. That doesn't even make sense. Assuming the bike is the right size, you have an approximately correct fitting (saddle height, stem length etc), and don't have a significant injury, your bike should be comfortable to ride. It shouldn't be comfortable to ride after x number of rides. It should be comfortable, period.

I don't know if you are riding your bike "wrong" or not. I don't even know what that means. You told us that your saddle is painful for several rides. This is unnecessary. It means your saddle doesn't fit properly, since your saddle should be comfortable on ALL rides, whether or not it's the first "few" rides of the season or not. Don't use euphemisms like "reacclimate" or 'sore.' The fact is, your saddle hurts. You haven't found the right saddle.

Your saddle should also be comfortable even when your "legs are tired."

No more excuses for pain. Keep looking for a comfortable saddle until you find one. Start with the approximate width that is best for you. The three general ranges:

narrow: 135 or below

medium: 140-149

wide: 150 or more.

This is a rough guide to start with and if you try one of each, you'll have a good idea of where to go from there. Best of luck!

TimothyH

People need to chill out.

philbob57

I thought Specialized saddles come with a 30-day money-back warranty. If this thing truly hurts a broken-in butt, it's the wrong choice, IMO, but you haven't lost much if you purchased from an authorized dealer, unless it's beyond the 30 days. (And if you bought it 2nd hand, you can resell it.)

OTOH, if the 12 miles you rode were the first 12 miles of the year, I'd bet a lot that you need to acclimate your butt to the bike.

Before investing in another new saddle, I suggest you check out https://www.cervelo.com/en/engineeri...f-road-saddles.

I think anyone interested in saddles needs to read the documentation at ismseat.com, Selle SMP's patent application (BICYCLE SADDLE), and Steve Hogg's blog entries on Selle SMP saddles. They argue, persuasively IMO, that sit-bone width is not crucial to saddle fit, since bending over to reach the handlebars takes weight off the sit-bones and puts it on the pubic rami. (Bending one's back instead of keeping one's back straight and bending at the pelvis is too likely to cause disc problems in the back.)

I think the acrimony on this thread stems from thinking one's opinions and experiences are universal facts. If I'm right, the solution is to share opinions and experiences merely as opinions and experiences. Everybody's mileage varies to some degree.

Wheever

OP, it may or may not be your body needing to "get used" to the saddle, that I can't tell you. but what I CAN tell you is that when your saddle fits you correctly, is the correct saddle for you, properly positioned on the bike for YOUR anatomy, everything just works, and there's no need for your body to "get used" to it, within a certain small margin of irritation. (Which will also have to do with your shorts, btw.)

What I mean: I spent a lot of time and a lot of money finding the right saddle; I was off the bike for most of the winter. Put in maybe 100 miles in the last 6 months. I got on the bike and did a 55-mile ride (The New York 5 boro tour.) and came off the bike only with a little chafing on the inside of one thigh, (probably from just standing and waiting with one leg on the ground.) My point is, my "butt calluses " had certainly gone away over the last 6 months, but I had no pain or discomfort of any kind during the tour, which was about 4 hours of toodling along, with only a couple of stops.

So! We cannot judge what the issues at hand might be, here from our computers, but I can tell you that once I found the correct saddle, I NEVER had any discomfort again. Of any kind. But only you can judge whether that's what's going on.

Good luck!

Nao_lin

I'm sorry but I have to completely agree with jefnvk here. When i first got into cycling my behind was sore after like 5 miles of riding, now on the same exact saddle i can go many many more miles without feeling any discomfort in that area. Same thing when my GF was getting into cycling recently, the second she got on the bike like 1 mile into it she was complaining the seat was too hard (since she was used to cruisers with big cushy seats) and she wasn't used to it, a month later she got used to it and that pain was gone.

Second, when i'm riding my MTB on the trails (as i'm in a more upright position) then on my rode bike, the more tired i get the more i start sitting my ass on the saddle rather then distributing my weight on the bike or standing over the saddle on technical terrain. When i am really feeling dead i stop getting off the saddle and I can feel my myself putting all my weight on my saddle because i'm tired. This doesn't apply to road biking as much but in my own experience the more tired I am the more i tend to sit back on my seat and increase the potential for soreness since more of my weight is on it.

rgconner

I have had to stop riding several times for multiple year spans, mostly due to non-bike injuries.

Always uncomfortable while rebuilding my endurance on the bike.

What is really funny is the "Don't listen to them, I know everything attitude."

A clyde is going to have a much harder time acclimating to a saddle... I have had to do it more than once.

Wanderer

Specialized Body Geometry saddles aren't that bad - I agree that you need more miles on it to arrive at a decision.

Bmach

Let's just say that everyone is different. My butt has not met a saddle that it does not like. I have never replaced the stock saddle, except for the one the broke. As for the op, I would get a couple of hundred miles on it before replacing.

IamNed

I have saddle art on my garage wall. I can't judge a saddle on comfort now until about 80 miles. Last Wednesday I rode 120 miles on a saddle I still don't think is perfect, but it gets me through some decently long rides. That's good enough for me. 12 miles? Try something different. I can tell within 12 miles if a saddle won't work for me. You can buy a lot of saddles for far less than what people spend on wheels that make no difference in their speed. But comfort is worth some cost.

unterhausen

for me, if a saddle isn't ever going to be comfortable, I know that on the first ride. It's really hard to know in the OP's situation though. Hopefully you guys being anklebiters didn't scare him off.

I figure a really bad saddle is tolerable to me for up to about 50 miles. If a saddle is still comfortable after 100 miles, it's a potential keeper. But now that I have found the fizik aliante, all my bikes have that, except for the ones that have Ariones. Which apparently are for totally different hip bone widths, but I find them both comfortable. Ariones go on bikes for shorter distances though.

Dizzo

Thanks for all the insight folks!
And thanks for keeping this post at the top
I'm going to get a chance to put on a lot more miles this weekend. That should give me a good idea of if I can expect this saddle to get better.
I contacted my lbs, and they offer a 30 day refund policy. Looks like I can try all the saddles I want with no worries

JagR

Great advice! When I got into cycling, I was quick to dismiss the "hard" saddles or what appeared to be at 1st glance. In my experience, these turn out to be the most comfortable.

elcruxio

Well, this only really works in one pelvic orientation. The "buttometer" which measures the ischial tuberosities works if you sit with your pelvis relatively upright. This does not mean however that one would need to ride upright since some people then bend forward at the back and not the pelvis. However if you're not a rider with that pelvic orientation and instead bend forward at the pelvis and not the back, the width of ischial tuberosities starts to have less relevance. This is mainly the reason why I should ride a saddle of minimum of 155mm in width, at least according to the buttometer, but now ride a saddle which is 135mm wide and could probably go even narrower.

Also what you are not addressing at all in this post or other posts in this thread is other issues which may crop up from a "too comfortable" saddle, namely numbness in the genitalia. If you're lucky you can ride saddles which have enough padding to remove all pain, but simultaneosly do not chafe or cause numbness. I have a couple of seats which are in the zero pain category but for me are quite numbness inducing. However if you are not lucky, you need a saddle which has less padding to compress the tissues in the nether regions to eliminate numbness. These saddles are painful initially as the skin and other tissues need to get acclimatized to compression.
And if you're very unlucky, like me, you can kiss conventional saddles goodbye and need to use something a bit weird looking, like an ISM. Now I'm not complaining, the ISM is as close to saddle Nirvana as I've ever gotten to, but it also requires some getting used to since I'm now sitting on parts which have never experienced pressure and are thus quite in distress after longer rides.

Hardrock23

I have ridden saddles that seemed great until about a couple weeks or so in, then they started creating pressure/causing pain. The saddles that started awful, stayed that way though.

If your saddle is causing any discomfort/pain, pressure, rubbing, pinching, etc. then I'd go ahead and try some others out.
I do think there is a difference between being new to riding and having some soreness around the sit bones, and just having a plain painful saddle. I don't know which is the case for you though. If you don't know which yet, it shouldn't take long to know, though.

Most of the advice given above about how to narrow your search is good. I didn't go through too many to find the right one. I took note of what I liked and didn't like about each and put that into finding the next one. I figured out which widths would work, and knew that I needed a firmer saddle with a full cut-out, shape not mattering as much (flat or curved). LBS "take-offs" and test saddles, places with good return policies, CL, and ebay were all good sources for finding & trying saddles for $20 or less (IME).
But keep in mind, if you try new saddles, that the way its adjusted can really affect the feel of it - don't put one on and immediately take it off if you hop on real quick and instantly think it isn't going to work for you. Make some small adjustments during a ride or so at least, to make sure...My keeper saddle didn't feel right at all when I first put it on but once I got it adjusted correctly it was great.