I wrote last week about a running injury that I’ve been nursing for the past couple of weeks – nothing too bad, just a sore hamstring. I took last week off from running after only making it about a tenth of a mile before the hamstring started hurting again. Instead I went for a seven mile walk. That seemed to help quite a bit and I was feeling quite good after my spin on Monday. Tuesday was an easy zone 2 effort for an hour. On Wednesday I had some afternoon traveling to do so I put in a rather hard half hour effort (zone 3 warmup, zone 4 20 minutes, zone 3 cooldown) and my hamstring was just a little tight afterward. Yesterday I settled in for a zone 2/zone 3 hourlong spin and about 30 minutes into it my hamstring started barking at me. Ten minutes later I was a little more than uncomfortable and intensely curious as to what was going on…
I ended up narrowing it down to saddle height which seemed “outside of the box’ because my knees weren’t hurting at all (front of the knee hurts, lower the saddle – back of the knee hurts, raise the saddle). I thought about looking it up on Livestrong while I was still on the bike, but the more I pedaled, the more it made sense so didn’t bother trying to look it up. I unclipped and grabbed my multi-tool off of my desk. I lowered the saddle 1 – 2 millimeters and hopped back on… The difference in feel actually had me laughing, I just wished I’d known earlier. Really though, that’s just how these things work when you’re talking about a millimeter or two. I’ve got no way of knowing that I’m off until something starts hurting.
I was overextending my hamstrings trying to get down to the bottom of the pedal stroke…and the funny thing was that I was favoring my left leg a little too. I was just ever so slightly listing to the left.
After lowering the saddle that millimeter or two and finishing my spin, the pain stopped. Lesson learned. I would complain about wishing it had come a little easier (my saddle has been in that same spot for months) but it really doesn’t matter all that much. I only missed one run – all things considered, that’s nothing. It is funny though, just how much a millimeter or two matters on a bicycle.
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Great tips!
It’s funny the tiniest things you notice when pushing yourself hard that you wouldn’t otherwise notice. I just encountered a similar hamstring issue because of my seat being a few millimeters too far back.
Exactly! Whoever would guess that a half of a quarter of an inch could be such a big deal.
You did the right thing! Just don’t get all obsessive like Merckx:
You’d think he’d have been a little better prepared, eh? 😉
yeah I don’t know what his deal was. He’d raise it, then lower it, then raise it again. OCD I guess
In the end, he was fast enough to get away with it so there’s that.
The result? I can’t say that my times were improved or I became a faster cyclist. BUT, I could absolutely feel a difference. All the little nagging pains, pings, and odd sensations were gone! Yes, my butt still hurts after 30 miles in the saddle … that’s not gonna change!
Your but shouldn’t hurt after 30 miles – not even close, unless you only ride once in a while. If your bike is set up properly then you probably do just need more saddle time, but if you have a decent saddle and have it set up right, you shouldn’t start hurting till 80 miles or so. If you have a saddle with a lot of cushion – that’s the one other problem that I can think of. You want only a millimeter or two of padding, any more than that will restrict blood flow and thus, make you hurt.
[…] 2 days ago I re-read this blog post about seat height and sore ham strings & decided to apply the same theory to my knee joints. […]
[…] From there, I’m hobbled and before long I can’t even run. I covered this once before, here. The funny thing was the few posts before that, I’d thought it was a running form […]
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