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Help sought on basic saddle setup
Hello! I'm new to these forums and am struggling with my saddle setup - hope someone can help.
I commute by bike. My old commute was 11 miles each way, but after a recent move, it's now 22 miles each way and while 22 miles a day wasn't quite far enough to give me problems, 44 definitely is. I tried the full there-and-back yesterday for the first time, and am very sore/bruised today.
I looked at some of the stickied threads on saddles, and they are largely based on sit-bone width. My sit bones rarely, if ever press on the saddle and instead my weight seems to be much further forward, so I know my basic saddle setup is probably wrong.
I used to ride a men's hybrid (Trek 7.3), then had a WSD Trek road bike for a while, but didn't like the head-down position for stop-start city riding. I never managed to find a comfy saddle on my old hybrid, and settled on a Jett 155 which at least had a cutout and reduced my bits and pieces getting squashed. The saddle situation on the road bike was better - I had a Sella SMP on that, and got it set up so my weight was mostly on my sit bones, plus the drop-away nose reduced chafing at the front. I was pretty happy with that.
My current bike is a Trek 7.6. WSD. I tried the saddle which came on it for a while, but couldn't push it far forward enough on the rails to get it to where my weight rested on my sit bones. Instead, my weight tended to rest on my labia and further forward, which meant lots of soreness after every ride.
I have now swapped this saddle back to the Selle SMP Pro (men's).
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If I roll my back I can get my sit bones to rest on the back of the saddle, and again the dropped nose and middle cutout has alleviated a lot of the chafing at the front. However, my weight seems to rest on the tendons where my legs join my body, and that area feels very bruised and tender after cycling to the point where I can't bear to cycle for a day or do afterwards. If I push the saddle forwards so that my sit bones rest on the saddle, the front of the saddle (before the nose drops) is too wide and rubs/bruises me.
This is all clearly wrong. I don't know if there are other factors here, like the bike being the wrong size, or my saddle being too high/low (I ride clipless and have the saddle at the height it's supposed to be with the leg at full stretch at the bottom of the pedal if your heel is dipped, etc)
All saddles seem to be flat across the top, yet my anatomy undulates wildly. In that respect the Sella SMP has fitted the contours of my body much better than most, but even that seems too wide across the front, leading to the bruising on my inner thigh/crotch area.
I'm totally stuck. I don't really have £185 to spend on another SMP saddle (which may not work) but if anyone has tried one of the narrower versions of the SMP saddle and found it works for them, I'd love to know!
Any advice gratefully accepted :)
