Tough ride today

[steveindenmark]

Rob, you have brought up many points that will have many answers and opinions.

Saddles......saddles are very personal and what may suit me may not suit you. Brooks is usually the first saddle suggested. There are three problems with Brooks saddles. First of all they are very expensive, second they are mostly made of leather. Ive never been keen about leather mixing with rain. Thirdly, not everybody has a Brooks bum. I love them but know lots of people who just cannot get on with them. A very expensive mistake to make.

I changed my most ridden bikes over to Charge saddles this year. A Charge Spoon and a Charge Pan. I prefer the Pan and have ridden about 2000kms on it and it is excellent. Its a bit bigger than the Spoon but looks good on my Carbon Road bike. You get them for between £20-30 on e bay.

Shorts...I always ride with 2 pairs of padded shorts but I dont know anyone else that does. I can ride all day and not be uncomfortable. Jeans are awful to ride in. In Winter horse riding jodphurs are good to ride a bike in. They dont have seams, they stretch and they are warm.

Cream... Lots of riders use chamois cream. You buy it in bike shops and Wiggle online. I use a zinc based nappy rash lotion which you can buy at any chemist. It works just as well as chamois cream and is cheaper.

Handle bars....someone has mentioned bar end grips, which are a good idea. Try moving your seat forward to get the weight under you and off your arms. If you can it may help if you turn your handlebar stem upside down. It may help raise the bars a bit and that can help.

 

[NorthernDave]

Cheap solution to chafing or soreness, Aqueous Cream - available in Wilko, Poundland and pretty much any supermarket or chemist.
You can spend a lot more on specialist creams or lotions, but I've yet to find anything better.

 

[RobWard]

Rob, you have brought up many points that will have many answers and opinions.

Saddles......saddles are very personal and what may suit me may not suit you. Brooks is usually the first saddle suggested. There are three problems with Brooks saddles. First of all they are very expensive, second they are mostly made of leather. Ive never been keen about leather mixing with rain. Thirdly, not everybody has a Brooks bum. I love them but know lots of people who just cannot get on with them. A very expensive mistake to make.

I changed my most ridden bikes over to Charge saddles this year. A Charge Spoon and a Charge Pan. I prefer the Pan and have ridden about 2000kms on it and it is excellent. Its a bit bigger than the Spoon but looks good on my Carbon Road bike. You get them for between £20-30 on e bay.

Shorts...I always ride with 2 pairs of padded shorts but I dont know anyone else that does. I can ride all day and not be uncomfortable. Jeans are awful to ride in. In Winter horse riding jodphurs are good to ride a bike in. They dont have seams, they stretch and they are warm.

Cream... Lots of riders use chamois cream. You buy it in bike shops and Wiggle online. I use a zinc based nappy rash lotion which you can buy at any chemist. It works just as well as chamois cream and is cheaper.

Handle bars....someone has mentioned bar end grips, which are a good idea. Try moving your seat forward to get the weight under you and off your arms. If you can it may help if you turn your handlebar stem upside down. It may help raise the bars a bit and that can help.

More excellent pointers. Many thanks

 

[screenman]

The one problem I see with being too upright is more weight goes through the saddle. Dropping the bars made me more comfortable, and that after 40 years of roughly the same position.

The nice thing is we can make so many adjustments until we find what works best.

 

[welsh dragon]

You are correct about Brooks not being for everyone that's why I suggested having a saddle fitting. There are some shops that will let you try a saddle and will allow you to exchange it for another if it doesn't suit. My point is that comfort saddles, or saddles with padding are not that good. It seems counter intuitive that harder saddles can be Comfier, but it's true. I always thought the more padding the better, but nope.

Saddles are a very personal item and what suits one won't be any good for someone else. I hope you find the right one.

 

[Slick]

Most solutions have already been suggested, but as I still consider myself fairly newish to this cycling thingy I would try and give yourself a bit more credit for a good effort. I kinda fell into the same trap, concentrating on mileage rather than effort until I started cycling with someone else. On my chosen route, we did 50 miles without hardly breaking sweat. I considered that an achievement. On the other guys chosen route, we did 22 miles and I was dead on my feet. As others have noted, we all get good and bad days, but I've come to the conclusion that effort is more important than anything. Well done, and don't panic, your fitness level will be improving all the time.

 

[steveindenmark]

As you see Rob, we are all saying different things. But we are all agreeing that you have to try different things for yourself, because we are all very different when it comes to bikes.

When you do make adjustments to your bike, make them very small and gradual and then try them for a while. I have been riding for over 50 years and still make small adjustments on a regular basis, as I am sure everyone else is.

 

[mjr]

You'll find there are some like me, who have various saddles, all lightly padded, who ride unpadded. I don't understand all the people who insist you should get uncomfortably hard saddles and then wear padded pants. That's just an expensive way of moving padding around.

But I doubt you'll find many who advise wearing jeans for more thanshort distances. The seams are usually too cchunky, although you can get cycling jeans if you really want.

 

[freiston]

My personal thoughts (and I think Sheldon said something similar) are that saddle sore for cyclists is a bit like sore and blistered feet for walkers (and most people relate to walking more easily) - there are certain shoes and socks that will cause anyone discomfort for a walk of any appreciable length.
If you have decent shoes/boots and socks that you get on with, you will be able to do miles with little or no discomfort. If you are new to walking, even if you have 'the right' footwear, you are still likely to get discomfort if you are not used to walking the distance.
If you are used to walking the distance, you might not need to mollycoddle your feet as much as others who aren't.

For most of my cycling (which isn't great distances [yet] - only about 20-30 miles), I wear seamless microfibre pants and 'York' style tights and don't suffer any real discomfort. After a long time out of the saddle, 10 miles was making me sore.

 

[screenman]

You'll find there are some like me, who have various saddles, all lightly padded, who ride unpadded. I don't understand all the people who insist you should get uncomfortably hard saddles and then wear padded pants. That's just an expensive way of moving padding around.

But I doubt you'll find many who advise wearing jeans for more thanshort distances. The seams are usually too cchunky, although you can get cycling jeans if you really want.

Oil

Because with padded shorts the padding is next to your skin, unlike a padded saddle. There is a huge difference.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Sounds like it was "one of those days" which made everything worse. Well done for toughing it out. And you now have a zillion options to consider. Remember "padded shorts" doesn't necessarily mean full lycra gimp suit. You can get padded undershorts (basically stretchy underpants with padding).

Keeo at it

 

[mjr]

Because with padded shorts the padding is next to your skin, unlike a padded saddle. There is a huge difference.

Yeah. You replace your underpants instead of one saddle per bike and have to get changed before and after every ride and waddle at the coffee stop.

Back to the OP. I have found Vaseline Intensive Repair useful after washing to deal with consequences of a wrong saddle. Not needed it for a while.

 

[welsh dragon]

I think padded shorts or not are a bit like what helmet. everyone is different and what suits one won't be acceptable for another, just like saddles. The only important thing is to find one that suits you regardless of what anyone else uses.

 

[screenman]

Yeah. You replace your underpants instead of one saddle per bike and have to get changed before and after every ride and waddle at the coffee stop.

Back to the OP. I have found Vaseline Intensive Repair useful after washing to deal with consequences of a wrong saddle. Not needed it for a while.

Are you disagreeing with what I wrote?

 

[vickster]

Lose the horrid round grips, get some ergo ones so you can rest your palms. Alothough are those grip shifts, if so don't know if you can change?

26 miles in jeans, ouch, bet you had underwear on underneath for extra seams, padded shorts/pants, commando ftw, under your jeans if you prefer. You might find you can ride long distances in jeans once your bum has toughened up and got used to riding, and the bikes is all set upmjust so, I certainly couldn't though.