how long to "wear in" a new bike? (aka Help the saddle is hurting my girly bits!)

[Cataboo]

On any bike... proper saddle height is when you're sitting in the saddle, your leg should be fully extended with a very slight bend to it (knees not locked) when your foot is on the pedal at the bottom of the stroke...

So basically, no, you shouldn't be able to reach the ground at all when you're up in the saddle... If your seat is too low, you're doing waaaay too much work to keep moving, and you probably are stressing your knees... If my saddle's too low, I definitely feel it in my knees.

Try inching your saddle up like 1/4 of an inch to 1/2 an inch at a time... Till you get it up to the proper height.

It really isn't a problem starting & stopping and not being able to reach the ground... all of us do it & a lot of us do it while using clipped in pedals, mountain bikers do it... you just naturally just lean your bike and stop. and as you get more familiar with biking... you may be doing more track stands or just pausing instead of actually putting your feet down when you stop.


One thing that I do sometimes when stopping in traffic... is if there's a curb, I'll rest my foot on that instead of leaning the bike.

This is actually kinda a pet peeve of mine... I'll ride on a multi use path or a bike path, and probably 80-90% of the women I pass have their seats too low... little girls included. Quite often you'll see a guy riding with his wife or gf - his seat is at the proper height, hers is too low and she's strugglign to keep up... I'd say probably about 40-50% of guys will have their seats too low.