Saddle Wear - I didn't realize it was this bad!

When I first realized a rail was coming loose on my Terry Butterfly, I was annoyed. Then I looked at their website and discovered saddles can wear out in as little as 5,000 miles. Mine has well over 6,000 and I'm not exactly a lightweight, so then I was less annoyed that it was breaking.

Anyway, I ordered a new Butterfly and it arrived today. I took it out to the bike and looked at the old saddle...I had no idea how worn out the old one was! Without a new saddle to compare, I never would've realized the old saddle was ready for retirement. The padding is a lot more broken down than I realized, the cut out is mis-shapen, and the leather is worn and wrinkly on the edges. Then I went out for a ride and realized I could feel a huge difference. The new saddle feels wonderful...much better support on my sit bones so my girlie parts aren't getting smooshed down onto the edges of the cut out. I didn't even realize the old saddle was doing this until I rode the new one.

Now I'm happy that the rail was coming out. Otherwise I probably would've ridden the old saddle all season. So the moral of my story is, you may want to think about replacing your saddle before you think you need to replace it!

I usually get only between 4 to 5k miles out of my Terry Butterfly Tri Gel saddles before they start to get uncomfortable.

That happened to me a year ago when I got new bike tires. Mine had thousands of miles on them and I figured they still had some life left, but I ordered some new ones just to be ready. When I compared the new tires and the old ones I was SHOCKED to see how badly worn my tires were! I changed to the new ones immediately, needless to say. Sometimes we are just used to something and don't see that it's worn out.

but isn't it such a pain to replace a saddle? :p I just had to replace a worn out terry Liberator X gel. no rail problems but it just wasn't as comfortable as it used to be.