Quote Originally Posted by nuthatch
WOW! I never thought about my elbow pain coming from too narrow bars!!! I thought I'd just need to toughen up my elbow muscles - I've only done two long rides on my new road bike. What I can't believe is that riding with the standard 170mm(is that right?) handlebars woud be too narrow for a woman, even a wide shouldered woman like me. Do lots of men have this problem? Seems like they would with many having even wider shoulders.
Men? Well, you know men, they don't complain, they just suck it up, at least the ones I know.

I'm wide shouldered, and the sort of pain I had was definetely not something that was going to go away. To think about it, my husband, and the LBS guys thought I was just being a sissy and didn't believe that getting wider bars would help, but when we changed out the bars (after the LBS guy said, "well, it is going to cost XX$" , I'm saying, "SO", and then when they saw I had instant relief it made them believers. Sometimes us gals just have to insist that if it ain't right it ain't gonna get better by "sucking it up" "riding through it" or "biting the bullet".

Grog, I hope you can get get pain free before too many kilometers. That is just a miserable way to ride.