This is a guest post by Richard
Which butt? My butt which didn’t want to be placed onto a bike seat, you could call it posterior anxiety disorder (P.A.D) for short. Every time I walked past my bike, which was about every time I relented and got into my car instead I would say to myself that soon I would instead be relegating my car for those days best spent indoors. The problem I had with my bike wasn’t the actual process of riding it as my body has always been up to that task, the problem was with the padding on the seat. Every time I have spent a while out of the saddle there was always an acclimatisation process for my butt to get used to spending time mated to the bike seat.
I work from home a lot of the time and the most frequent thing I do outside of the home was actually driving all the way to the gym in order to… ride the stationary bike, amongst other things like the cross trainer and weights. I was driving all the way to the gym, 7 kilometres each way in order to get the same exercise I could have had for free by simply biking that same distance. Why did I do this? Because I couldn’t stand to put my butt through that kind of punishment and my body was certainly willing. Granted, my body wasn’t always this willing or able to put up with the strains of high speed biking. I have been on a quest of sorts, an agenda of health and wealth of which my cycling is merely the latest step in a long journey of self improvement. Essentially I have gone from nearly a pack a day to nearly a six pack over the last 80 days with the help of a lot of determination and my personal sadist (trainer) Dwayne Stuart. My weight peaked at over 93kg sometime last year which led to a lot of exploded jean buttons and zippers, wardrobe failures are not fun when they happen in public!
My weight is now a far more reasonable 78kg and I have been looking with lusting eyes at my ‘tantalising jeans’ the ones I got with the 33 inch waist as a pair of tight black pants I can hopefully soon aspire to wear.
I have learnt a lot over the past month of cycling and honestly I have enjoyed it far more than the driving it replaced. I have surprised everyone, from my doctor to family members and even myself as to how much progress I have made. I used to believe that driving a car represented a kind of freedom, however now it seems more of a burden than a device of liberation. Freedom for me means ‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom from’ because you need both in my mind to be truly free and on my bike I am free to go where I need to go and I am free from the financial burden of owning a car. My butt can take the seat without too many complaints at this point and I would say quite confidently I’ll be as comfortable in the saddle as my new sexier self within a couple of months. I’ve never had a six pack before, looking forward to great things from an upright cycling position.
Unity, I did think this post was going to be a discussion on bicycle seats. But it wasn’t.
I have discovered ‘vasaline”, works for one of my bikes with a particular seat
The Doc prescribed a concoction of antibiotic/fungacide/steroid- which caused heightened problems – I know now, but didn’t know then, that steriods do not allow skin to heal.
“I do think that a article on types of seats would be a good idea – how about it?”
@ Jules – I can’t say that I know much about bicycle seats from a technical point of view but I could do a bit of a thing from my own experience. If you wanted to do something, just email me (see contact form) and I can pop it up.
Great stuff Richard. Those shorter trips are a lot of fun on a bike and not much slower than a car, in fact sometimes faster if the traffic is heavy or you can take a shortcut.
The more time you spend on your bike, the less pain you will be in, but (excuse the pun) not all seats are created equal or bums, so it is worth talking to a good bike shop to sort you out with a good seat. The seat my last bike came with was fine on short rides, but the longer I rode the worse it felt, so got measured and fitted to a seat that suited my “sit bones” now no problems at all!