Sport Today

I'm slowly learning to ride; at this point one big problem is
lack of condition.  I can ride around the block, with several remounts,
but it leaves me huffing and puffing.

But now that I can handle this (still short) distance, I have a new
big problem.  The inside of my thighs gets chafed, and yesterday
when I got home I discovered I'd broken the skin and have a ***-looking
boo-boo.  Maybe I won't ride today to get a headstart on healing, but
 1) Am I doing something well-known to be wrong?
 2) Would wearing any particular style of trousers help?  Yesterday I
    was wearing jeans.  I've been experimenting with different pairs of
    shorts; none of them seems like the answer, but the jeans aren't either.
    Bicycle shorts could be an idea but I don't own any and hesitate to
    buy a pair for a possibly unsuccessful experiment.  
 3) Assuming I'm not the only one with this problem, are there some
    favorite palliatives or cures out there?

Stephen Taylor

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At first, the clothes are essential for not getting a sore butt. Bike
shorts are the best by far I have ever tested. Of course you haven't
to wear pants to achieve an optimum comfort. When riding with jeans
my ***starts to get sore after about 10 to 15 km. With bike shorts
I can do 70km and more without any soreness.

The second point you should consider is the saddle you use. Some bad
(mostly cheap) seats are not very comfortable. Perhaps you should
reread my article about the tour over the alps about 2 weeks ago.
There I described in detail some methods to modify a seat for more
comfort. Don't forget to adjust the seat correctly (height *and*
angle).

The last thing I want to mention is the fact that soreness becomes
less when getting more used to long distance riding. It dosn't
disappear at all. But you will learn to change your position on the
seat time by time. So different areas of your ***will carry your
weight while the other ones can recover meanwhile. When beeing on
tour, I make a small break (1 or 2 minutes is enough) about any 10km
for recovering my butt. That sounds ridiculous, but it is very
usefull when doing large trips (I think of 50km or more) even if you
think after the first 10km you don't need this resting. After another
20km you will regret not having had it.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
   Wolfgang

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Alberto Ruiz

Sincerely,

Phew!

If you really want to wear jeans then things to look for are:

1: Make sure that the join of the two leg and crotch seams is not big
and nobbly where you are going to be sitting on it..VERY painful...

2: Look for a very fine weave with small threads instead of the thicker
heavy jeans you get.

3: Get ones with thin legs and big deep pockets..

I'd still go for the shorts if I were you..

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As for skin injuries, we just discovered a product called Transderm. It
looks very much like Handi-Wrap; it is transparent and slightly stretchy.
It comes in sizes somewhat larger than Band Aids and can be worn over
non-weeping wounds for up to 7 days! You can wear them in the shower
without having them come off. The price was a little steep, but the
roadburns over my daughters ribcage healed painlessly in about 5 days (no
remaining scab, she was riding again the 1st day). They are made to
breathe, but keep the stinging air away. Super product.

I may well have said all this before, but:

Get a decent saddle!  I have *never* had any problems with my Sem saddle,
but within 5 minutes of getting on Stu's unicycle (Stan Charisma to this
newsgroup) at the Edinburgh convention, I could hardly walk!  Stu seems
to manage; I can't understand how anyone could use it for more than a
couple of minutes without serious chafing, abrasion, smarting, pinching
and grating(nothing is quite as descriptive as 'chafe').  This object-
pretending-to-be-a-saddle is made of grippy plastic, I spose that's the
reason.  It does seem to be possible to get used to almost any saddle,
though, with time, unless you're going for a long ride.

If you're interested, the one on my uni is I think a standard Sem saddle
(leather, at least that's what it looks like; plastic end things to stop
the saddle getting scuffed).  I've been using this same uni for 5 years,
, no probs apart from the bolts going rusty from being left in a damp
room for a couple of years (except right at the start, when
i put the cranks on the wrong way round despite the clearly-labelled 'L'
and 'R' !).

John

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