George

I have been riding with the Smp saddle and kind of like it, but I would like to try a flat saddle. I bought a slr boost and really liked it , but 25 miles into the ride I could feel some irritation on my left side. Near the front of the sit bone. I’ve had this going on for a while now and I would like to know what causes this . I like the way the SLR fit, but that nagging rubbing on the left side is stopping me from getting it. Any help would be appreciated.

Iride01 

Rubbing as in abrasive to your skin and you are getting a sore rubbed in to it? Or is this some numbness or muscle pain?

If it is abrasive rubbing and this is on a road bike, then do you wear snug fitting bike shorts or bibs sans underwear? If so then maybe you need to groom down there to make the hair a little shorter. Too much hair just rolls around like little roller bearings between the skin and fabric of shorts. That gets irritating quick for me and it has to go.

Might still be you need to adjust the saddle position slightly fore/aft or tilt.

George

Thanks for the reply. I don’t have a leg discrepancy and I don’t know why the fitter recommended shims. So I just took the shims out and I’ll try that and see what happens. I may try shaving as you mentioned.

Iride01 

You should discuss the shims with your fitter if you used one. I'd think the shims are more about correcting knee, ankle or foot issues or keeping you from having those issues. I'm not too sure shims will affect the issue you described. But I'm not a fitter. I'm only experienced in what has worked for me. And shims aren't uncommon for anyone using road cleats. I use SPD cleats on my road bike, so I've no experience with shims for cleats or shoes either.

If it is abrasion, then some people swear by chamois creams such as Chamois Butter and even Boudreaux's Butt Paste for diaper rash. I've never used them. I haven't had a saddle sore but once or twice when I still wore underwear beneath my shorts. And I have had none in the last 12 years.

George

I always use chamois cream.

Carbonfiberboy 

I've had issues at least sort of like that on some saddles. In my case, my guess is that my sit bones are sinking into the padding and the irritation is at the forward end of that dent I'm making. Every time that leg comes down, there's a bit of rubbing there. This also has something to do with the saddle's curvature right there. If the saddle's surface were rolling down right there, that ridge wouldn't be there.

George

Thanks CB, that got me thinking. I use to use a Selle Italia Regal E and I never had this problem. Instead of going with the endurance slr I just may go with the firmer one.

cyclezen

check for a difference in saddle width, where your sitzbones are placed on each saddle. If the SLR boost is narrower at this point/location, than your SMP, you might be off the proper support point on that side.
It's most common, when riding on a saddle narrower than optimum for your sitzbones width, to be seated more to one side than the other, and for that side to be a hot point, ache, rubbing.
A few mm can make a big difference. Some times it can be just the outside 'shape' at that particular point of the saddle.
When they're close in that sizing, the issue doesn;t show itself until you've been in the saddle for some time.
Ride On
Yuri

Road Fan

I would try to rotate the saddle just a little bit so the nose is toward the side which is affected. If you make a tiny, minuscule rotation nothing will happen. If you make one too big you might feel some hip leaning. Somewhere in between those two limits is where this technique can help you. One good thing about this adjustment is you should be able to try it without going back through adjusting saddle height, tilt, and setback in a long optimization cycle. You can optimize just this one variable.

Also, some saddles which are wide enough for me get wide pretty suddenly, and for others the shape changes too gradually. These gradual ones can cause an irritation or contusion near the sit bone.

I definitely agree with Cyclezen - the right amount to make the adjustment is just a few mm, maybe only one, depending! If you offset the nose of the saddle by 2 mm, then the sitbone support points move fore or aft about ⅓ of that much. But it can make a difference.

George

You would think with all my years of riding I would have it together by now lOL. This issue has been problem for a long time until I starting using the SMP and that worked great for me. I really like a flater saddle better. That's why I'm trying this out. If it doesn't work I'll just go back to the SMP. Anyhow thanks for all the replies.

Iride01 

Are you certain it was a Selle Italia? Or one of the other umpteen Selle something brands out there.

Perhaps Selle San Marco.

PeteHski

How would you go about setting the saddle rotation accurate to a tolerance of 1 mm? I just eyeball the saddle rotation and would be non the wiser if it was 1 mm off centre. However, I do agree with your suggestion of rotating the saddle slightly. Maybe it already is a little off-centre causing a rub on the left side. Or maybe you need to introduce a little asymmetry to make it work.

I would also experiment with lowering the saddle a little just in case it is slightly too high and forcing a hip compensation on one side. Maybe try lowering the saddle 5 mm and see if it still irritates on the left side. I find that saddle height and saddle comfort can be quite closely related.

Road Fan

I also can't set it accurately and repeatably, this is why I said about 1 mm. If I wasn't consistent with that message, I apologize. I just meant to say "turn your saddle just a little tiny bit." One could scribe a scale onto the seatpost with an extra-fine Sharpie and calibrate in that manner after marking the frame tube (the maximally obsessed could even make a vernier set of scales on painter's tape), could also attach a pointer to the saddle top, tape a graduated scale (like the paper measuring tapes they give away free at IKEA) to the handlebars and set it all up that way. The idea is to reduce the pressure by a small amount on the irritated side. This inevitably adds a bit of pressure to the other side, so that addition needs to be small enough not to be a new irritation. My usual subjective method is to sight along the saddle top from behind the bike to see where the centerline points relative to the back of the stem, which indicates the location of the steering axis. Kind of like a set of rifle sights.

Practically, I loosen the seatpost binder bolt just a little and gently whack the front end of the saddle to move the nose over just barely noticably, snug the bolt back in, and take a test sit or ride. I can feel if I've made an improvement. Then do a final re-torque (I use the torque wrench to prevent excessively enthusiastic retightening) however you do it, and ride until some other irritation or pain point shows up and has to be corrected. While training for a tour I got to consecutive 70-mile pain-free days chasing down little problems in this manner. It was a Selle AnAtomica saddle. I learned the point about saddle rotation from the excellent instructions SA originally distributed with their products. Now their guidelines are just about back to that standard.

But yes, it was inaccurate on my part, to suggest this is a quantitatively repeatable adjustment. But it still is useful as part of a pain relief toolbox. And with a pointer, a scale or a sighting stick of some sort, you can make it at least somewhat repeatable, if not independently referenced and quantitative.

In that tour training sequence, I also lowered the saddle a bit to reduce excessive pressure from kind of forcing my feet down to the pedal, and it was useful combined with small rotations. It gave me a little reduction of saddle pressure, which of course helps with comfort all over the saddle contact area. But here again too much reduction can cause another problem, due to excessive knee flex. Talk about the princess and the pea! In those days, 5 mm would have been way too much lowering for me.

George

Yesterday I took the shims out and moved the cleat forward a mm and got a little chafing. So this morning I made both cleats the same and so far it has been OK. I’ll try for a longer ride this weekend and see what happens. So far I think it’s a keeper.

Iride01 

What happened to your fitter? Are they someone that won't even talk to you anymore without paying for another fit? Talking to them and finding out why they did various things will be invaluable to you and to us.

Right now it seems like you are just tossing out the results of the money you spent. You might be tossing out those things for the wrong imagined reason.

George

The fit I got was a long time ago.

George

I did end up lowering the saddle 2mm as well.

PeteHski

I get what you mean. I just find 1mm an imperceptible change. But I do realise that some people are uber-sensitive to saddle positioning. One highly regarded fitter made the point in regard to "micro-adjustment" that most saddles have at least a 5 mm wide sweetspot where you could choose to sit on it. Personally I move around a little on my saddle anyway, so it never seems that critical. Others seem to require mm resolution to avoid issues.