When I wrote the other day that the original saddle was simply not going to work on the ’03 5200, I was bummed – but you’re never going to fit on a saddle that’s too wide, so it had to go.

Now, I didn’t want to mess with trying to find the part needed to mount a carbon-railed saddle on the bike (I don’t even know if there is such a thing for the proprietary ’03 Race Lite seat post) and I wasn’t about to broom the seat post for a carbon saddle, so I found the Selle Italia SLR Boost Superflow with manganese rails online and snapped one up. At 202 grams (claimed weight), it’s not the lightest saddle = but it’s not all that heavy either. I’ve got heavier out in the shed.

I had a Specialized Toupe 130mm on the bike until the new saddle arrived – a Ti-railed beauty that was a pretty decent color match for the 5200… but I have to be honest, I morally couldn’t bring myself to leaving the Specialized saddle on my vintage Trek. I opted to at least keep the saddle in the same family as the original.

I had the saddle mounted and set the day it arrived, and yesterday was my first ride on it. There’s a five-mile break-in period. I’ll get that right out of the way. I was expecting to be good right out of the box, but it took a few miles to seat in. Once it did, though, my goodness, it was fabulous.

I got the new Trek set to within a quarter-inch (4 or 5mm) of my Specialized Venge in reach and right on with everything else.

Then, yesterday after work I had the perfect opportunity to give it a roll. The first five miles were touch-and-go, but once I settled in, the ride was golden. I had the tires inflated a bit too much but other than that, I was fast and low which helped in the wind a lot.

I ended the ride with just shy of an 18-mph average (29 km/h) over 18-miles, after a long and tiring day. A few colleagues and I volunteered with Habitat for Humanity and our assignment was to clean up a lady’s house, cut the grass, trim back the front-of-house shrubs that were wildly overgrown, and fix a stump that had overgrown with weeds that was lined with rocks in a 6′ (2-meter) circle around the stump. We pulled out all the rocks, put down a weed barrier, and made the space into a nice flowerbed. I ended up with 10,000 steps by noon and I was beat. In other words, an 18-mph average after that was pretty fantastic. Especially considering I’d have been happy with 16-mph after that day.

I can always judge a decent saddle by this simple matrix; would I put this saddle on the three other road bikes (two road, one gravel)? If the answer is “yes”, and it is in this case, it’s a keeper.

Now, does this mean I plan on buying three more? Ah, no. I won’t buy another. The saddles I have on the other bikes are fantastic. I’m simply saying, I thought about it.

One final note on this great saddle; it’s not short in the looks category, either. Just sayin’.

Fit Recovery

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