Hi all, I’ve got a uni-related problem that seems to me that it should be quite
obvious to 50% of the riding population, yet doesn’t appear to be an issue in
the literature or among my friends, so I thought ask for help here.
Actually, it’s two problems related in that they both have to do with how the
seat contacts my body in … uh… “uncomfortable” ways.
I’ve got the “Anyone Can Ride A Unicycle” from Miyata (1984), and it mentions
that “women seem to enjoy a distinct biological advantage” WRT unicycles,
because they are free from “supererogatory excrescencies” (whatever that is –
I can imagine), but then only mentions that a bathing suit can be useful
before abanding this most-pressing subject to warn the reader to use shoes
when riding (!).
Well, at least with me, neither a bathing suit nor shoes help relive this, uh,
pressing problem I have when riding. I’d like to improve my skill, but no
matter what I do I go down in crushing defeat. It’s to the point that I feel
my hopes of becoming proficient are squashed.
I have no problems riding a bycicle, but after being a unicyclist on and off for
about a year, I find if very difficult to understand how a >man< can ride w/o a
certain “manly pain”. And even when this pain isn’t an issue, I still have pain
that would beset a woman rider as well.
Every mount is followed by a few minutes of shifting and re-adjusting and
standing on the pedals more than I should and tense worry about an unexpected
bump in the road before I either 1) fall or 2) find a comfortable un-crushing
compromise between the seat and my more un-womanly body parts. When I find that
happy medium, I then feel confident to try new skills and such. But even then,
it isn’t long before the seat hurts, because the bones of my pelvis are almost
in direct contact with the seat, and the skin/muscle in between becomes sore and
tender. I’d expect a rider of any gender to have this problem…
I’ve talked to a unicycling friend, Jack Halpern, about this. He wrote the
Miyata guide I mentioned, so I’d think he’d know something about this. He tells
me that “you get used to riding” and that it’s not a problem for anyone he
knows. Well, I’ve been riding about a year, and I definately have not goten
used to it. He says it’s not a problem for him, and since I’ve met his kids I
know he’s got the, uh, same type of biology as I have, so I have no clue why I
should be having such >extream< problems. I guess he thinks it’s all in my head
(so to speak), so he suggested I write to this mailing list.
I’m new to the mailing list and don’t know the population here, but I hope I can
speak frankly. I’ve tried everything from wearing baggy sweats with no underwear
to very controlling briefs with jeans, and the problem is generally the same. On
one front, I find that sometimes (not all the time), there is inTENSE and
IMMEDIATE pain from skin or hair “caught” and pulled during the action of
settling down in the seat. Standing (VERY quickly) and readjusting usually
solves this problem right away.
But the real problem is that on another front there is the gender-related issue.
Among the gender-specific items that might contact the seat, I’ve only the
problem with the testicles. Despite my joking attitude above, the problem really
isn’t one of “crushing”, but of how things become adjusted and settled. As the
weight is transfered to the seat, things are moved and shoved out of the way.
Jack says that things should end up resting more or less on or to the side of
the seat. Regardless, things need to move up. What’s usually painful for me is
that rather that remain in the scrotum and move around freely, the testicals
move up out of the scrotum into my body (where it’s not natural), almost to be a
lump under the skin on my lower belly (exaggurating here to explain). Since this
is not where they’re supposed to be, there’s no room, and the pressure is very,
very painful in a way that no man needs to have explained and that no woman can
understand.
I understand the biology involved with heat and cold, and that when it’s cold
the testicles “recoil” toward the warmth of the body. I would suppose that this
would increase the tendency for my experiencing the problem, but I’ve found
consistant pain through the winter and summer as well.
If, after much adjusing and apparent random shear luck, I’m able to get things
settled in a comfortable way, the relief of being able to sit with my full
weight on the seat is palatable. But then, the final front hits. Once I get to
the comfortable situation, it’s more or less my pelvis sitting on the seat, and
the padding isn’t enough to stop the intervening skin and muscle from becoming
tender and painful. This kind of pain is wholly unrelated to the gender-related
pain mentioned above, but highly limiting nevertheless.
I’m 6’3 (192cm) so wonder if maybe my body size is inappropriate for the
(standard size adult) seat I have. I asked Jack Halpern about it, and he says
that when he rides, the seat contacts not his upper legs, but his torso. Until
then, I’d thought that maybe due to my height, maybe my legs were too far apart
for the seat, and I was missing out on some very-upper-leg/ seat contact to help
ease the burdon from the skin under my pelvis, but now I have no idea why it
hurts for me and not for others. When I ride with the seat backwards, I find
it’s much less paiful in both the ways I descirbed above. But it also feels
funny (since it is indeed backwards). I currently have several layers of
bubble-wrappin taped to my saddle, and that seems to help to some extent.
Jack said that maybe the seat height is an issue, but even after he spent
considerable time to analyze me and the seat height (i.e. found the “ideal”
hight for me), the problem was unchanged. Even today I tried to ride a cycle
that was about 6" too short, and one that was about 1" too tall, and in both
cases I had the problem (although the too-tall situation was more painful).
I’d like to ride more, but at this point it’s getting to be just not worth the
pain. I’s been 8 hours since I rode for 45 minutes earlier today, yet I still
feel the pain from the tenderness from the pelvis/ seat contact. And for the 45
minutes, it seemed like half the time was spent just trying to get to a
situation where I felt I could concentrate on riding and not on the various
painful pressures.
I’m pretty desperate. Any ideas? Thanks, jeffrey
Jeffrey E.F. Friedl <jfriedl@omron.co.jp> Omron Corporation, Kyoto Japan See my
Jap/Eng dictionary at http://www.omron.co.jp/cgi-bin/j-e or
http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/cgi-bin/j-e