For a long time I have had trouble with my bike eating my trousers:
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/2021/seatpost/IMG_20211217_155517.jpg
The last time, after it got through my trousers, it started to eat my
leg. I'll spare you photos of that, but it was quite poor really.
I looked more closely and found that, looking at my saddle from above,
the saddle clamp protruded out from under the side of the saddle nose.
The bad spot was just where the clamp was. The clamp was at the very
front of the saddle rails.[1]
So, I thought, well, if I could get a seatpost with more layback, I
could move the clamp back on the rails. So I set about hunting for
such a seatpost. I typed in suitable search terms.
The dominant kind of hit was a webforum thread where someone says "I
want a seatpost with lots of layback because I like my saddle far
back", followed by endless know-it-alls telling the OP that that
wasn't really what they wanted. Typically they would accuse (and yes,
an accusation, not a suggestion) the OP of adhering to some "KOPS"
doctrine and told the OP that KOPS was discredited and they should go
and get a proper bike fitting or something.
In some cases this kind of useless behaviour would persist even if the
OP told the forum that they had tried having their saddle further
forward, but it gave them knee pain or back pain or something. The know-it-alls were still sure that they knew better.
The idea that people might have a personal comfort preference about
where they had their saddle, or might have personal experience of what
worked best for them, was anathema. I felt sure that if I posted even
my holes-in-my-trousers story I would be told some pile of nonsense
about how the problem was something else. Jeez.
I did find some recommendations. But they were all startlingly
expensive. And/or unavailable - if you're lucky you might get
something from the 70s or 80s on ebay, but it's a crapshoot
(especially wrt diameter). The most layback you could get at a normal
kind of price for a modern post was about 25mm - and that was what I
had already.
I conjecture that seatposts with lots of layback have been deemed
heretical by the mass market, so the only people who can get them are
racing types who have actual physios and coaches and doctors and so on
- who are perhaps collectively less put off by suggestions of heresy.
I did discover that some heavy people with Brooks saddles found that
the rails kept breaking, because if you clamp them right at the front
of the rail to get the saddle where you want, your weight is
cantilevered out backwards. SJSC sell a kind of aluminium extender
seatpost clamp thing which would probably do nicely for that problem
if the loads it imposes don't destroy your actual seatpost, but of
course it wouldn't help with my problem.
Eventually I thought "this is ridiculous, I will save money on
trousers if I buy a stupidly expensive seatpost". So now I have an
IRD Wayback. Imported at fearsome expense and with great delay from a
US ebay seller using the ebay "global shipping programme". It fits
nicely and by dint of careful measurement, and a spin round the block,
I have set it up just the way I had the saddle before:
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/2021/seatpost/IMG_20211217_155347.jpg
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/2021/seatpost/IMG_20211217_155234.jpg
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/2021/seatpost/IMG_20211217_155243.jpg
You can see that the rails are barely visible in the from-above photo.
I guess they may still rub a bit. Not sure if, with trousers-with-holes-already-in, it will still make a hole in my leg,
but I think at the very least with as-yet-unperforated trousers it
should reduce the rate of wear considerably.
[1] Weirdly, it only seems to do this on the left side. But this is
probably something to do with my right foot being oddly crooked. I
once had a specialist ski boot shop refuse to deal with me because my
right foot it was too odd![2] In my clippy shoes I have some ad-hoc
shims between the cleat and the shoe, to make the right cleat be at an
angle.
[2] Last time I went skiing the ski boot hire shop found me some boots
which were so good I bought them. And yes I ski crooked - you can see
in photos and videos quite clearly that my right knee is generally
tilted noticeably inwards - but I have been skiing like this for years
and my knees are fine. I just wanted boots that didn't need me to
cover the entire surface of my feet in Compeed and/or give me a
hairline fracture of the talus.
--
Ian Jackson <
ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> These opinions are my own.
Pronouns: they/he. If I emailed you from @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk,
that is a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.
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