Originally Posted by
GAtkins
Ok, so I did another 18 miles last night and started with the saddle up 10mm. Immediately felt the saddle was too high, both riding and with a foot down at stops, and the bike was more twitchy - left toes had started the hot foot and numbness.
Stopped mid ride and lowered the saddle 5mm, so that it was up a net 5mm from the start of the ride. Sweet spot! Left toe numbness subsided. Bike still twitchy, but I'll get used to that now and solve it later with a longer stem as my fitness/posture improves. When I rode a couple of nights ago before raising the saddle (but after having moved it forward 150mm), the muscles right above and in front of both knees felt overworked after the ride and when I woke up the next morning.
This time, nothing abnormal hurt. Just felt like a slow, old guy had gone on a bike ride when I got up this morning. I'm going to leave it there for a while.
Glenn
I've done a lot of in-ride adjustments, but I try to keep them very small, 1 mm if I can - I want to sneak up on the good spot, not adjust back an forth circling around it. Usually these adjustments are driven by abrasion pain between the top of the thigh and what's in between them, balanced by perineal pain if I go too high and make my hips rock, or knee pain if I go too low and have too much pressure in my patella. And when I do find a sweet spot, it will need reconsideration after perhaps 10 or 15 miles. For me training up for distance is equal to fine tuning the saddle to a point which is tolerable over that distance. But this is why I said before that I am a little in doubt of your term "effective saddle height." What makes a given saddle height be in the range which is best, is the comfort of the bike in the riding you need or want to do, not any mathematical ideal, thought such calculations make a good starting point. One reason they make a good starting point is, that point is repeatable.
Not all of these "final" adjustments are saddle height. There are fore-aft as you know, tilt up and down (aka "pitch"), and rotation of the saddle around the seat tube axis ("yaw"). In general I try to get balance on the saddle first (fore/aft), then lack of sliding (pitch), lack of lateral pressure (yaw), and leg/hip comfort in extension (saddle height). Then go back and do it again when I find I screwed something up!