Sunday, August 31, 2008

Sometimes you shoot and miss

I'm in the midst of trying out new saddles because I've become sort of disenchanted with my San Marco Aspide Arrowhead that I've had for I think ~4 years. The cover is in reasonable shape, but either the padding is starting to break down or my aging ass is becoming more sensitive, but I'm having some issues. I got 3 samples from the greatest LBS in the world to try out and I put 2 hours a piece on 2 different ones this weekend. Yesterday's was ok, but not great. Probably nothing I'd go with, but I wasn't miserable. Today's on the other hand was just a miserable experience. I could tell about 30 minutes in it was going to be a long ride, but I was committed at that point so I wasn't going home to change it out. It was just awful in every way you don't want a saddle to be awful. Oh well... I made it home and I'll recover. One more to try out, but I've got low expectations for this one. Maybe I'll start out with a trainer trial or just pedal a little 5 mile loop around home to start with. This is tricky business because you really can't tell until you hit the road and in my opinion you need to do several things to be sure: 1) ride at least 2 hours on it if not more, 2) ride a good chunk of time on it really really easy, 3) ride some time on it really hard. I'm finding that my whole body position varies depending on the effort I'm putting in and it has a big effect on my saddle comfort. To make it more fun, recommendations don't really do much since beauty is in the ass of the beholder when it comes to these things. Ah well, I'll find one I'm sure.

6 comments:

Colin R said...

I used to worry about finding the perfect saddle fit. Then I started riding with chamois cream, and now every saddle is decent.

trackrich said...

Eurostyle is the only thing that made yesterday possible. No amount of lube cures bad pressure points...

solobreak said...

Colin's is a lay up, but I'm not going to take it. This is a family blog, right?

solobreak said...

You also tipped us off that your "fantastic" day involved a trip to the bike shop...

gewilli said...

concor.... ya don't want rec's but man it is a nice shape...

trackrich said...

I thought about trying the Concor, but I've never been much for the rocker style... might give it a try anyways.

And Solo wins this week's detailed readership award... I'm still gonna make you wait though...