Originally Posted by
Gary in NJ
Can you expand on this a bit. I have recently purchased a new bike and I find myself 'tweaking" the saddle after every ride in an attempt to make it more comfortable. Perhaps my saddle position is not the problem. I've been told by other riders that my hoods appear to be high. Perhaps this is keeping me upright in the saddle?
To a large extent, maybe I've ridden a bike so long and put up with some uncomfortable saddles, that maybe a even six inch piece of 2x4 stuck on the seat post will be comfortable to me. Don't know. But there is something to be said for just having to get used to it. If all I do are short rides for a time, then even the first couple long rides after months of short rides have some saddle pains in my butt.
In one aspect of what I said I'm talking about how some seem to think of balancing the weight on their hands by balancing on the saddle. All that does is put more weight in the saddle. A road bike position is not upright. You are leaning forward and you will have weight on your hands and wrists.
Though it can be done, I firmly believe that a road bike is not made for leisurely riding. It's expected that you are going to be putting out some reasonable amount of power for the distance intended to be traveled. So if you think of balancing that power over the BB, then the opposite reaction to the force you put into the BB will reduce both the weight your butt and wrists/hands feel. Because I think of balancing the power over the BB, my saddle is further forward than many others that gripe about their butts and go the other way with huge set back on their seat posts, which makes me wonder why they didn't get a cruiser style bike with the seat tube angle that wouldn't require that grossly setback seat post. Essentially they took a road bike geometry and made it fit like a cruiser. But I digress......<grin>
Getting back to the road bike position I mentioned, another aspect of reducing the weight felt on you wrists/hands is being bent over, the more you bend, the more the trunk of your body resists that bending and reduces how much weight you feel on the bars. So back when newb and riding with little bar drop from saddle to bars, I griped more than I do now with a slight 4" drop from saddle to bars. Not extreme, but definitely in the opposite position from the upright people mistakenly think is the comfortable position.
I'm not sure what your friends are meaning about your hood position. Mine extend out from the bar pointing more forward than up. I see many old style brakes on drop bars pointing more up than forward and perhaps a few with their STI's like that also. Is it wrong? I don't know. Fit depends on so many other things that are assessed together to determine where to go with a specific thing you can adjust.
As well as going lower with bars, I'm going back to the narrower bars of my Raleigh. 38 cm wide. I put 42 cm on my Paramount and my Tarmac came with 42 cm bars. However both always had me riding with my wrists bent after riding moderate distances. That makes for wrist pain that might mistakenly be interpreted as weight on wrists. I didn't have this issue on 38 cm bars although my shoulder measurements say I can even use a 44 cm wide bar. When I get them in and ride them for a time I'll find out whether it's a valid point or not.