Saddle up

I know you’re thinking this is about going for a ride.  Yes, it is.  But it’s also about the false start I got to my ride this morning.

Last night I swapped the test Fi:zi’k saddle I’d had on loan for about a week, to the new Selle San Marco Aspide Glamour that I’d bought off TradeMe.

After measuring that the nose was in fact down, and that the distance from the head whatever it’s called (that the spacers sit on) to the nose of the saddle matched the distance from the saddle that I was taking off, I thought all was in order and I’d be good to go.

Naturally being a new unfamiliar saddle I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got on my bike.  I found that the backs of my thighs were touching where I didn’t expect, it wasn’t the inside of my thighs but the back of them.

I also thought the angle seemed wrong.  I felt like I was sort of falling down the back.  I looked at the nose and it didn’t seem quite right and blow me down, I seemed to be having to stretch to keep a hold on the handle bars.  Something wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t really know if it was just a new saddle or not.

It got the better of me and at 2k and so I got off to check what was happening.

Wouldn’t you know it, I was nose UP.  Clearly I didn’t have enough oomph to tighten the nuts on the saddle clamp thingee last night and my humongous weight caused my saddle to slip down the back.  I was saddle up.

After having the problem confirmed I tried to ride more on the front of the saddle as I made my way home.  I was also trying to work out if I’d just throw in the towel today and just do it all again tomorrow.

Mark was surprised to hear me come home and I let him know what happened.  He got up (no sleep in for him) and got the spirit level (we did it by tape measure last night to check the nose was more down than the back) to do the job properly.

I got it all measured and tightened as much as I could, then Mark finished it off.  Trying to be careful as he knew carbon could crack under pressure.

After checking the weather for Sunday and seeing 40% chance of rain I decided to get back on the bike and re-start the training.

The saddle felt way better.  It was a bit harder on my sit bones than I expected (the saddle I’d been testing doesn’t have any padding to speak of) but shifting my position to use the aero bars was just perfect.  In fact I preferred that position to cycling normally.  Although my hip flexors were feeling it.

As I said to Richard, once I get the right saddle I can then go to Active Health to get the bike setup sorted.

The ride went smoothly after the false start.  I left home with a –1 WNW wind of 6km (which is pretty weak) and found the ride home to be equally as pleasant so checked and it was now SW winds.  That made sense.

Off the bike and off with several layers of clothes, change of socks (my left foot was frozen), on with the GPS (to test the distance of the loop I run) and I was away (after 10 minutes!).

It was now 2 degrees.  Gosh it warmed up so much!

I was really cold and felt I was hardly moving.  It was hard work to get the body to run.  I checked the time at the 2km mark and I was surprised that it was showing an average of 5:20/k.  That is somewhat faster than I expected.  Then I was wondering if I could keep that up.

I tried to concentrate on foot fall, using my glutes (which I couldn’t feel) and keeping my shoulders and arms relaxed.

Turns out the loop is 7.99km and I ran it with an average of 5:24/k.  So I didn’t slow down, despite it feeling really slow, and the time per kilometre was way better than I expected.  It just goes to show the difference between running through the forest and out on the streets.

So while over the last 2 weeks my run through the forest has been significantly slower, much slower than I used to run, my road running is looking good.

Today’s session wasn’t listed as a brick session, and given it might have been around 10 minutes between getting home and heading back out, I’m still pleased with how I went.