I'm in the market for a new saddle, having just gotten a new Domane 4.5 Disk and finding that the new geometry makes clear that my beloved Selle SMP Lite 209 is actually too narrow for me where it counts (It tapers too quickly), so I've started a quest to find a saddle that is closer to what my butt actually needs. Of course, there's nothing like comparison shopping and daydreaming about stuff to get you into a heap of trouble, but while digging around and looking at saddles that might possibly be more the shape I need (similar width, but a little more pear-shaped), I've found an aspect of saddle fit and/or design that doesn't seem to be addressed directly in any discussion I've yet come across: where the rear Max point of the rails is relative to the widest part of the saddle.

My sit bones were measured for a 138mm seat. My Lite 209 is 139mm, but the fact of the matter is that I have a hard time getting my sit bones onto that width, because the rails simply don't go far enough back. On my giant, I used a zero setback post, and it worked well, but due to the taper of the SMP, I still found myself perched far enough forward that the seat was pretty much in my butt a lot of the time. And so started looking at saddles that were wider, with a good-sized cutout.


So I had some good candidates, or so I thought: Selle italia Max Flite gel, Max SLR, SLR superflow 145, etc. What I did then was download pictures of the saddles taken from the underside, and stacked them up in a graphics program on top of a similar picture of the Lite 209, correcting for picture size. I thought I had found the perfect saddle, based on measurements, the Max Flite Gel...then I noticed the placement of the rails. And when I lined up the pictures based on the rail ends, it turned out that most of the saddles had the bulk of their width so far behind the rail end, that, for me, they wouldn't be much different for me than the Lite 209.


So here is my deep thought of the day: Manufacturers need to supply some sort of "rail offset" number because the fact of the matter is, that the "width" of a saddle is pretty irrelevant if it's further back than where your butt wants to be. And I think that not having a reference point for that further adds to the mysticism that surrounds finding the right saddle.

Without my crazy nerdy graphic skills, I would never have noted the placement of the rails on the Max Flite Gel, and would have ordered another saddle that had pretty much the exact same taper as the saddle I already have. A couple saddles seem to have more of the bulk forward of the rail ends than the others, and look like likely candidates, but I'm afraid in the end no matter what saddle I end up with, I'm going to have to buy another zero-offset post. (And yes, I know, you don't know a thing about a saddle until you've ridden it, and you don't know a thing about it until you do.)

Thoughts? Experiences? Further observations?