The continuing saga of saddle sores ...
I’ve been doing the 200K brevet for a number of years. This is my longest ride of the season and also the hardest, as well as the first long ride. This year I was slower than usual and the roads were worse than usual, so saddle sores reared their ugly head late in the ride. It was so bad I started standing even when there were no hills. Carlisle had a particularly rough winter, so I think I stood up all the way to the Concord border.
I was blithely confident that a good night’s sleep would put things right, but the next day I went out to do arrow maintenance on the Apple Pi ride, and the fire down below came back. I even went to the extent of wearing my Pearl Izumi shorts. Lest you get the wrong idea, these were actually handmedowns from Susan, who had deemed them unfit to wear but were still far better than anything else I owned. They were a noticeable improvement, but not the panacea I had hoped for.
So, when I got home I decided Something Must Be Done. I went rooting around in the medicine cabinet for something to ease my pain. Susan had all sorts of cremes and ointments, but nothing seemed appropriate until I stumbled onto something called “Bodyglide” which had an anti-friction formula that “stops chafing, blisters, saddle sores, and skin irritation.” There it was, the term “saddle sores” so this must be cycling specific. The “stops” part was a bit discouraging, since we were talking about a fait accompli here. Sort of like closing the barn door when the horse is already out, but I figured it was worth a shot. It looked like a roll-on deodorant, sort of like solid Vaseline, and the top was cracked, so all the active ingredients had probably long since vaporized, and who knows where it’s been, but I was in dire straits so I slathered some on.
The next day was a work day and rain was predicted. So I elected to ride the rainy day bike with fenders. Only problem was that it also had the most uncomfortable saddle since the dawn of creation. The original saddle had developed a cleft in the middle which had been widening with time. Now, I knew people spend good money to buy saddles that already have holes, so I tried to look on this as a feature. When the hole had reached critical mass, I delved into my box of saddles for a replacement. I found one that actually looked pretty modern and racy so I opted for that over the rest of the 15 year old $5 saddles. It looked snappy, but alas was extremely uncomfortable. It also developed a San Andreas fault in the middle. Must be due to the extreme pressure waves. Anyway, I was not too keen on mating wounded bum with saddle from hell, but I didn’t want to get my other bike wet. As it turned out, of course, the weathermen were completely wrong and it didn’t rain at all. All that suffering for naught.
When I got home I came across one of my shoulder pads. When the football player look went out of fashion in women’s clothes, I harvested quite a few of them, which I had used primarily in the winter as extra insulation for the family jewels. It seemed like they could serve as a bit of extra cushioning. So I applied one to the hot spot (the rest of my derriere was merely a warm spot) for the next day’s commute.
I also tried the technique I’d learned from watching horse riders, posting. Whenever I saw anything that looked a bit lumpy, I was out of the saddle.
So, after a few days of shoulder pads, body glide and posting I was back in the saddle again.
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