I you’ve been reading LowCadence.com for any time, you know that I have been having neck, hip, and knee problems for some time now. It has been a weird couple of months as I kept looking for the answer to fix these issues. Finally, last night a possible answer came to light.
Dr. David Mruz of Eastside Chiropractic told me to come by with my bike and he would set me up on it and try to see what my body was doing. So, I loaded up my bike in the rain and headed over — not sure what would happen. I had hope because the good doc had already helped me with my neck.
He measured my angles and had me do various spins on the bike. Then he started focusing on the points where my body touched the bike. First, he looked at the handle bars, then the feet, and finally the saddle.
When he got to the saddle I heard him let out a “hmmmm” as he squinted down at my saddle from behind the bike. “Come here,” he said. “Standing behind the bike, close one eye and adjust your gaze until the toptube is hiding the downtube.” He moved me into position for the test. “Now, bring the saddle into your field of vision.” He paused to let me follow his instructions. “Now, what do you see?” “Oooooo,” I replied. “I see the nose of the saddle pointing slightly to the right.”
We further examined the saddle. Turns out the carbon portion of the saddle was slightly moved to the left of the rails. The saddle was also dipping ever so slightly down on the right side. It was as though it has been twisted forcing the rear to move to the left which caused the nose to point to the right. Looking straight down on the saddle you could see that the adjustment screws below the saddle were partially covered by the right side of the saddle.
My Toupe saddle after my September crash.
What I wondered was “How did it happen and when did it happen?” As you can see in the picture above, the saddle had seen damage. However, back in September is seemed to be mainly cosemetic. I taped the saddle up and things seemed to be back to normal. I don’t recall seeing the adjustment screws hidden the way I saw them last evening.
My guess is that the rails where weakened during the crash and then slowly the saddle began to collapse. Of course, I was also dealing with the damage to my body at that time and that confused me trying to find the source. It has never taken me this long to heal from an accident. All of this points me to believe my issue truly is this saddle.
So, the next step is to replace the saddle and then get back on the bike. It should become apparent after a few rides whether the problem is with my body or the saddle. It could also be that it is a combination of the two. However, we won’t be able to focus on the body until we even out the variables from the bike.
