Was in the saddle for 400km and over 20hours at the weekend in one near continuous effort (bar a couple of food stops and comfort breaks here and there).
Despite decent shorts, chammy cream and a saddle I am happy with for rides perhaps up to about 7 or 8 hours, I was in agony with pressure points around my sitbones thereon after.
Is discomfort inevitable when riding for such a long time or are there any tips/tricks to being in the saddle for this sort of timespan? Do the very absolute top line shorts make any difference?? Or perhaps a saddle that isn’t as comfy for a day ride but comes into its own as the time ticks on? Redshift suspension seatpost??
I was on 30mm tyres, but wouldn’t want to go much larger on that front…
Or is it just a case of get used to it, there are no magic bullets???
I’d focus on the saddle more than anything else. I was riding an ISM PR2.0 with similar results to what you’ve described. All was good on longer rides up to about 16 hours, but would get some very uncomfortable nether-region rubbing / chafing / tingling after that. Switched a few years ago to an Infinity Saddle and all my sit-related long-ride issues disappeared.
I don’t believe the price-point of the shorts you use will have any sort of direct correlation to long-ride comfort, but the “fit” of the pad with the seat and your bits and pieces might make a difference. That’s going to be very individualized.
Yeah, so I did take a change of different shorts just to change the pressure points a little or change the densities of foam I was sat on. It made a little difference initially but then it all started to feel under pressure again.
Happy to keep trying saddles… In fact, probably good reason to go back and re-try a load of old saddles sat in my parts bin.
I think it might be a mix of the things you say. Do you ride every day? If not, maybe you do just need to develop a bit more “rawhide” down there….but yes, don’t stop looking until you’ve found a saddle that feels more or less as good after 24 hours as it does after 2. I use an SMP Dynamic on all my rides and short or long rides on it are a dream. I also use different shorts for different length rides - slimmer pad for intervals etc and Rapha Pro for ultra rides. If you have pain on the sit bones it sounds to me like the saddle you have isn’t distributing weight properly and/or your chamois is “bottoming out” too soon. Finding the right balance of springy/soft/stiff chamois is a whole project but worth it once you find your sweet spot! A piece of golden advice someone gave me on here was also to drop my cadence when riding in Z2 which helps to keep the weight off the backside a lot.
Yeah, so on the bike 6 days out of 7 every week. Probably about 9-12 hours a week. 4hours on a weekend ride, a couple of 1.5hr turbos and the rest around 1hr. Happy riding 7 or 8 hours. 20 hours was a mental challenge for comfort.
Like you suggest, often feel comfier pushing a bit more power or lower cadence - the power was unsustainable for 20 hours but the cadence drop was often inevitable with a lot of climbs 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 on the second half of the ride.
I don’t mind the endless search for comfort but just wondered if it’s one of those things that just gets more bearable than ever anything approaching comfort.
Far from being an ultra distance specialist, but somewhat often do 12-15h rides and hang out witj people that sometimes do 50h long ones. Also been on an obsessive compulsive saddle rabbit hole journey for the last year or so.
Some probably obvious inputs :
ride a lot in Z2, weekly. Besides the alleged metabolic gains, riding with low power completely changes our pressure patterns on the contact points. You state a long weekly ride, so you must be already doing so.
schedule standing periods. This sounds silly, but my ability to stay comfortable really increased once I started to force myself to spend some minutes pedaling standing every 30min. I think I got this from some Lael Wilcox interview. I often feel “damn, my rear is starting to be really tired” and then I spend 2min standing and I’m suddenly good as new.
ride a lot of different saddles and learn what works and what doesn’t for you. After a while you get pretty good at knowing the variables and spotting something that has a high potential of working for you. I spent a good deal of time this year looking for a saddle for my XC hardtail that I often use for long distances and bikepacking. After testing a bunch of stuff from Fizik, Selle Itália, Syncros, etc I knew that :
didn’t want anything wider than 140mm as I don’t use a dropper
need a long, almost to the tip ,and wide cutout
need a flat longitudinal profile, otherwise my hips lock at a specific angle and it kills my lower back
need an almost flat side to side profile, but not totally, otherwise the back of my tights start to hurt
need a well padded nose, I like to climb while there for long periods
a more “t” profile, with a more marked waist, works better than a more “V” one
nose edges need to be well rounded to prevent chaffing
With this requirements in mind, looking at the market, the Prologo Scratch M5 PAS ticked all the boxes. Got one, rode it for a couple of 1h workouts and then a 8h ride on the very same week and it indeed works 100%
Ah ok so sounds like the search goes on then! I have been swapping saddles for years due to various discomforts or injuries that have probably changed my position on the bike subtly.
Think my post was mostly a reality check as to whether comfort should be achievable for such long rides or whether it will never be totally comfortable, just by virtue of sitting in one position for hours. Even with the odd shuffle or stand up here or there.
I spent the last year looking for the perfect saddle…
I’d been able to ride on any saddle for a few hours - upto 4 ish, but anything over that it just got painful. I’d been doing a few 20 hour plus rides… and needed something which was not going to ruin the enjoyment.
So i went and got my sit bones measured and to my surprise they were a lot narrower than i thought.
So i’ve moved to a narrow saddles.
My current saddle is the SLR Boost Gravel S3. this seems to work at the moment.
I must have bought 5 saddles in the past year - all of them lovely but painful after 4 hours
That’s a very personal question as well…
On top of what the others wrote down, I would add finding the right amount of pubic hair down there (found out that a good trim makes it more comfy for me) and trying different styles of padding for shorts (Castelli and Albion are good for me)
I’m currently using SQlab 612 sadlle and this one works amazing for me.
I bought a Brooks B17 a few years ago. It’s such a completely different experience than any other saddle. I find it more comfortable in normal shorts without a chammy! This is great for bikepacking as it means you don’t have to live with a sweaty sponge on your arse .
They’re not that expensive really, so worth trying. Contrary to common experience, I found mine becoming comfy after only a few hours.
So I have actually just ordered one of the rubberised Brooks cambium saddles. Not a leather one but maybe that is next…
I have gone for wider saddles since an undiagnosed break of the socket of my pelvis a few years ago. However, having measured my sitbones with tinfoil over a piece of card a couple of times I get about 11cm… So perhaps I should be going narrower…??
I’m not sure about the rubber ones. Seems to negate the whole purpose of the fact that leather moulds to your sit bones. I’ve used mine over wet winters btw. If you wax it occasionally there seems to be no issues.
So I just remembered another thing you can use in an emergency for those pressure points. Compeed blister plasters, the big oval ones that go on your heel. Except put them on your sitbones or wherever you feel the most pressure. Works like a charm, just don’t expect to be able to pull them off right afterwards….trust me!!! I use them all the time for ultra rides and they have the added bonus of healing any abrasions that have started too.
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