Another post about my Brooks saddle

I was nervous about putting the Brooks saddle on my bicycle.

I mean this saddle is easily nicer than the entire rest of my bicycle. The value of my bicycle doubled just by having it in the same room. So, it sat in its box on a shelf, where I would look at it, dumbfounded that I managed to get such a great deal.

Monday night, I realized that I was turning into one of "those people" - the ones who buy things like gold-plated bicycles and hang them on the wall, more as an Objets d′art than what they are meant for.

The Aurumania Gold bike in its natural habitat

So, I put the saddle on my bicycle.

seriously, I need a new seatpost - if not a new bicycle for this saddle

First off, it is a dang good looking saddle. The narrow nose, and cutaway sides looked fast, but classic at the same time. It just looked right.

I had heard stories about the rigors of "breaking in" a Brooks saddle. Stories of the saddles feeling like sitting on a stone until it was broken in and conformed to your posterior (or is that the other way around). I had also heard that the break-in time could take anywhere from 100 to 1000 miles. Hoo boy, I wasn't looking forward to the sore butt I was expecting, but I also figured that "trainer time" would be the perfect venue to start the process.

Photo from Sheldon Brown's website.

I started up the Sufferfest (I figured if my bum was going to be hurting from the new saddle, it might as well have some company from my legs) and hopped on. What I expected and what I felt were two vastly different things. It felt comfortable, not the rock-hard, nether region-numbing sensation I was expecting. It just felt right. It was more slippery than my previous saddle, but then my previous saddle wasn't made out of highly polished leather. My bum settled into a comfortable position and my legs had to complain all by themselves for the next hour.

I know I used "It just looked right" and :"it just felt right" to describe this saddle. Well, I can't come up with any better description. There is nearly 150 years of saddle-making expertise behind this saddle, and you would be correct in assuming that they would have gotten it right in that amount of time.