"Saddle Saga"

or "The battle of the Balls"

 I don't know if you will find this amusing or pathetic or maybe a little of both.  But here is a pictoral description of 18 years of searching for the solution to numb free nuts!

First this.  It came with my first ever real road bike, a Steve Bauer.  The bike cost me $200!  Overall the seat was ok but in hindsight it was only cause at the time I thought a long ride was to Port Stanley and back....about 25K total

But I needed something a little slimmer when I started putting on more miles and so I got this.  Co-incidentally thats when the ball busting, mind numbing, pecker pinching agonies of the perenium began.  Thats the "taint" or the "gooch" for you more sophiscated types.  Also known as the "vanilla stripe" in the ladies....I'll let you figure that one out :)

Then came my Softride bike with this seat.  A very comfortable ride because of the suspension beam but still the hurtin down below did not go away.  As a matter of fact it continued to get worse with more time in the saddle.  For me, and I gather for many triathlon cyclists the problem is two fold.  One is just plain pain.  It freakin hurts enough that you can never really relax and focus on riding.  And then there is the numbness.  That may seem like a good thing in some ways, but believe me ladies, for us testosterone types there is no more disconcerting feeling than being able to reach down there and give the old boy a pinch and not be able to feel it!  Scary like Ozzy Osborne...or Sharon for that matter!

But....then I found the solution on the Internet.  What you see here is what is called a split rail saddle.  You can actually adjust the 2 sides in or out to make it fit your butt better.  Didn't work!  Just cost me 250 bucks!!

I would have gone back to one of my former more conventiaonal saddles after this, and just continued to live with the problem as best I could.  Of course through all these trials and tests, I was making endless adjustments to my overall position to try to find the sweet spot, but it never happened.

Then I got my beautiful Q-ROO bike and it came with my first ever triathlon specific saddle.  They had made quite a lot of progress in developing seats specifically for riders in the "aero" or "time trial" position, and indeed it was an improvement.  I don't know if you can see it in the picture but the nose of the saddle is longer, wider and more padded than a conventional road bike saddle

But as I started to crank up the miles in my Ironman journey the same old problems persisted.  After 2 or 3 hours I would be wiggling and squirming and shifting and standing....as opposed to relaxing and cycling.  So off to the store again for the next promise of a better life.  You can't really see it here but the middle of the saddle has a bit of a depression intended to alleviate the pressure off of the nerves and blood vessels in your crotch.  It kinda helped....a wee bit (or is that a wee-wee bit?)....such that this is the saddle that got me through 180 kms in the Okanagan and which I have been using ever since.

But....as I started to crank it back up again this summer the same old frustrations kept haunting me. So.... back to the Internet for solutions.  This time I came up with this.  The entire centre area of the saddel is cut away, so presumably it can't possibly put any pressure where you don't want it.  On top of that it is very nice and squishy and it has these vents in the hole which are supposed to improve air circulation in and around your secret parts.  Wrong!  The sides of the saddle simply caved in under your ass and effectively filled the hole, and despite an intiital feeling of comfort, Dick and the Boys were soon complaining profusely again

But!  One last try maybe eh?  This strange  looking thing was highly touted by the guy who designed it as being the solution for the gentleman who had tried everything without success.  The name of the company is ISM (Ideal Seat Modification) and I thought what the hell!  Roo still has some money in the bank and if I didn't tell her maybe she wouldn't miss another 245 bucks!!!

But guess what?  I think it's working.  The rationale is the same as some of the previous examples in that it is an attempt to eliminate the pressure down the middle of the saddle.  What they have also done here though is to make it wider and cut the front of the seat totally off.  The seat has to be wider to be able to creat a wide enough pressure free zone, and it has to be very ridgid so that it doesn't collapse inwards under your weight

The result is that you kinda feel like you are sitting on the wide side of a 2 X 4. and at first it is feels very uncomfortable.  But guess what?  I never, ever go numb!  Yes I mean never!  Never!  A few weeks ago I did a  167 km community ride in windy conditions and despite hardly ever standing I did not get the horrible sensation even once.  My butt is still adjusting to the extra width but I am very happy to be patient.  I believe my sit bones will adjust over time and I think that after 18 years I finally have a reasonable solution.

I put my previous saddle beside it so that you can see the significant difference in both width and length.  It is so short that the boys are actually riding out front, side by side like twins should be, and in the breeze where they are most content.

So that's it.  Believe it or not that was not a complete chronology.  There were others along the way that I gave away or put on other bikes.  But you get the message.
If this continues to feel good I'm gonna order another one and hide it away for the day they stop making them....don't tell Roo!

"Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle".---Elizabeth West

"Four wheels moves the body.  Two wheels moves the soul"---Anon

Love
peter