Mardy Bum

Thanks to everyone for the advice regarding my sore bottom. It's great to know you all care so much!

Above is the rogue saddle, a Specialized Toupe 143 mm width. As mucker Jacko stated, I now know they are also available as a 130 mm version. How is anyone supposed to know what size their bum is? Well the answer is to measure it actually, so I searched out my wife last night and gave her a ruler. I then exposed my bottom, bent over and put my middle fingers firmly on my ischial tuberosities (the bony bits you sit on). 'Measure between my fingers' I asked her...well I ordered her . 'OOOOOOOerhh', she said. Anyway, the upshot of this ridiculous episode is that I still don't know the size of my backside. Then she told me that when she was in a bike shop in Southampton they had a special bum-measuring gel pad device. That would do the trick.

I've had the bike back in the lounge, sitting on it propped against the sideboard, trying to make sure I've got the fore-aft position and height set correctly.

I've been massaging the synthetic chamois in my bike shorts with lovely Assos cream. Sorted.

Finally, another interesting thing is the torque settings quoted on my seat stem to ensure that the seat post clamp is tightened properly. With a carbon post and stem it would be easy to overcook it and crack the carbon, so I've always been a bit timid when I've been cinching it up. My mate John is the nation's top man with a torque wrench, so I asked him to check the tightness against the quoted setting of between 6.2 and 7.3 N-M (as if the average man in the street has an accurate torque wrench into which he can fit a 5 mm Allen key bit). Surprisingly, I had it done up far too loosely. Jacko uses hair spray to stop his slipping! The mind boggles.

When all this messing around is finished, I can't forget that I've got to get on the bike and ride. Time in the saddle is what I need. I'm going to go for a 20 miler today and try and use my borrowed heart rate monitor for the first time. One major problem is the complexity of this Suunto t6. I just can't get to grips with it. I want to keep my heart rate between two parameters, and be able to record my average rate at the end of the session. That should be easy, but I'm not confident that I've got it set up properly. We''ll see.