Need help from Brooks owners, please.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

The "S" models of Brooks saddles are shorter than the non-S models. Their rails are about 1 1/2" shorter as well. When i had a B17S I found I could not shove the saddle far back enough to feel balanced on my bike. It caused me to feel like I was falling forward with my weight, and this put too much weight on my hands and arms. More weight on your hands could mean shoulder discomfort. For me, it wasn't so much that I couldn't reach the handlebars, it was that there was too much weight coming down on my hands to hold myself up. I felt like I was holding myself up with my hands.

All this sounds familiar to me, and when I exchanged my B17S for a 'men's' B17, I was SO relieved to be able to slide the saddle back another 1.5". This made all the diff in the world to my sense of weight balance. It shifted my center of gravity back and my weight off my hands.

The main diff I found between the B17S and the B17 was not so much the shape of the saddle, or even its shortness/longness....it was the length of the rails and how that effected my being able to position the saddle further back.

I know it seems counter-intuitive to put your saddle further back if you think you are having a reach problem, but...
get on the floor, evenly on on your hands and knees. See how much weight is on your hands? Now, shift your butt backwards while keeping all hands and knees in the same spot- see how there is now less weight going onto your hands? Yet you have not brought your hands in closer to you. This is what happens when you shift your saddle a bit further back. It changes your center of gravity.

In addition to getting weight off your hands, shifting your weight back will also put less weight on your frontal 'girl parts'. Having more weight on your sitbones will help with soft tissue pain. In the meantime, be sure you are using a lube on your tender parts, or at least some creamy hypo-allergenic hand lotion- this does help on long rides, I find.
Hope this provides some further possibilities to think about.