lulubel
Über Member
- Location
- Malaga, Spain
I finally managed to get out on the MTB yesterday after 2 weeks of feeling run down with what passes for flu in this part of Spain.
I was working on my attack position before my lay off, so I decided further progress with that would require a lower saddle. I'd changed the saddle at the weekend, from the wide, squishy thing that was on the bike to my preferred SDG Allure that my OH says looks like a razor blade if she's ever seen one, and I was hoping that would make moving about easier. It did.
I left the saddle at full road height until I was at the top of the first climb. After that, it's "undulating" (some flat bits, some sloping bits, some steep bits) until you head back down via a choice of 3 different routes. I then lowered the saddle by about a inch to see how I got on. It was good on the downhill bits. The narrower saddle makes it easier to get my weight back, but having it lower as well put it further out of the way. The problem I had was a total loss of power on the uphill and flat sections, and my right knee started to hurt after about 15 minutes. I put the saddle back up, and normal service (and no knee pain) resumed.
I decided to practice leaning the bike in turns without leaning myself, which is totally alien to me with my road background, and led to a few hairy moments. I still have to break down "attack position" into its component parts, so adding weighting my outside leg, leaning the bike, keeping my body upright, and looking where I was going ended up with too much thinking and not enough speed on several occasions. But I'll get there, and on the one occasion when I actually got it right, it felt good.
My default braking position is 2 fingers on the brake levers, but I moved my hands further out and tried one finger for a while, which felt great, and the improvement in control from having one extra finger on each hand wrapped round the bars was amazing. I had to go back to 2 finger braking for proper descending because I couldn't slow down otherwise, but I'm really looking forward to easy braking when I get my new bike.
Anyway .... saddle height. At the moment, I think I'll have to keep it high unless I'm going to be descending for a while, but I think a dropper seat post might be a good idea for the future.
What does everyone else do?
I was working on my attack position before my lay off, so I decided further progress with that would require a lower saddle. I'd changed the saddle at the weekend, from the wide, squishy thing that was on the bike to my preferred SDG Allure that my OH says looks like a razor blade if she's ever seen one, and I was hoping that would make moving about easier. It did.
I left the saddle at full road height until I was at the top of the first climb. After that, it's "undulating" (some flat bits, some sloping bits, some steep bits) until you head back down via a choice of 3 different routes. I then lowered the saddle by about a inch to see how I got on. It was good on the downhill bits. The narrower saddle makes it easier to get my weight back, but having it lower as well put it further out of the way. The problem I had was a total loss of power on the uphill and flat sections, and my right knee started to hurt after about 15 minutes. I put the saddle back up, and normal service (and no knee pain) resumed.
I decided to practice leaning the bike in turns without leaning myself, which is totally alien to me with my road background, and led to a few hairy moments. I still have to break down "attack position" into its component parts, so adding weighting my outside leg, leaning the bike, keeping my body upright, and looking where I was going ended up with too much thinking and not enough speed on several occasions. But I'll get there, and on the one occasion when I actually got it right, it felt good.
My default braking position is 2 fingers on the brake levers, but I moved my hands further out and tried one finger for a while, which felt great, and the improvement in control from having one extra finger on each hand wrapped round the bars was amazing. I had to go back to 2 finger braking for proper descending because I couldn't slow down otherwise, but I'm really looking forward to easy braking when I get my new bike.
Anyway .... saddle height. At the moment, I think I'll have to keep it high unless I'm going to be descending for a while, but I think a dropper seat post might be a good idea for the future.
What does everyone else do?