New Saddle: Forte T1

Update:  After a year of pain issues, I got rid of this saddle.    It just didn’t work with my butt!  Read all about my saddle woes!

My old saddle wore out. This is an annual occurrence: I start to get more pain in my butt than expected for my training level. Then the seams on the nose of my saddle start to split and I start to get chaffing. Then I know it’s time for a new saddle.

Click picture below to see how bad the seams got this year. I put off the decision because I was debating getting a new type of saddle.

I did decide to get a different saddle, rather than the same style that came with my bike. A friend recommended a Forte T1 saddle from Performance Bikes. He said it has a softer nose and thus more comfortable if you ride in the aero position. I spend 90% of my riding time aero, and I do experience quite a bit of butt pain; especially when building mileage; and also, any time I go beyond 50 miles. I also do a lot of wiggling around on the saddle during rides, to give different parts of my butt equal time to get sore. If that makes any sense.

So, I thought I’d try this new saddle. I like it alot. It not only has a softer nose, but the nose is also a tiny bit flexible. My old saddle (Specialized Dolce butterfly women’s specific saddle) has a very hard narrow nose, and alot of soft gel in the rear, aka, the butterfly wings. I was a little worried that the Forte saddle would not work with my female butt, but I don’t see that as a problem at all.

I had second thoughts about installing the new saddle right before my long ride, thinking it would be better to test it out on a shorter ride. But, I was too excited to try it out, so just went for it. I figured I could cut my ride short if butt pain was too much.

Since the new saddle is a completely different shape than my old saddle, it was quite hard to figure out the correct position to install it. I started out by measuring from the top tube up to the nose of the existing saddle; and from the seat tube to the nose. Like this:

The green bandage on the old saddle is to cover up the tears, to avoid chaffing. That idea worked great to get me through until my new saddle arrived. I used Mueller M Wrap, which is a foamy sports wrap that teenage girls use to hold their hair back for sports. You can buy it locally at Omega Sports. (click photo to enlarge)

The next step, was to install the new saddle such that the nose was located at the exact same distances as measured above. That ended up with something like this (photoshop enhanced, new saddle is given a red hue). I didn’t create this picture until today, so did not notice at the time how much lower the rear of the saddle was.

When I went out riding, the new saddle felt WAY too low. So, I stopped and fiddled with it several times over the first 15 miles of my ride. Finally it felt good, so I just kept riding. And riding. And riding. I was pretty surprised that my butt didn’t hurt. I expected that I’d go through some pain of adaptation until my butt was used to the new saddle.

Things were feeling good. I was doing my 50 mile very hilly route past John Edwards house. I’ve been wanting to extend my long ride to 60 miles, so at 40 miles, I decided to add another leg to my planned route. At 50 miles, my legs, hips and lower back were getting really sore. But I was committed to 60 miles at that point, so kept riding. Ouch, ouch, ouch. I was hurting pretty badly by the time the ride was over. Made a pace of 16.6 mph in Zone 1 on this ride, which is great! Actually, it was 16.4 mph before doing the last 10 miles. So, I increased my pace despite my fatigue and pain.

To top off my pain, my training plan called for a TRR (10 minute race pace transition run) immediately after this ride. It felt pretty awful to run on such stiff sore legs. Made a pace of 9 min/mile on that short run, so was thrilled with that.

That night, all my muscles were extremely stiff and tight. I actually took some time to stretch – something I hardly ever do (bad, I know).

Today, I did my long run, which went quite horribly on these stiff, sore legs. Pace of 13 min/mile.

Here’s a photo of the saddle in it’s final position, after the 60 mile ride where I fiddled with it…It’s superimposed on the original saddle photo – again, the new saddle is the one with the red hue applied.

This new position is a bit higher and more forward. I like the new saddle. However, any time I make even a small change in my bike, it equals pain, because I am using my muscles in a different way. When I was fiddling with my handlebars and aerobar elbow pads, I was in pain for a month, because I kept changing things. I am thinking another bike fit might be worth the $75. That way, I can get things right once, and then just go thru the pain of adaptation ONCE!