Up until recently, I was, at best, a twice-a-month cyclist.

Not because I didn’t want to bike more often, but because every ride would be followed by inevitable days-long soreness from an hour or two spent in the saddle. Ever since I was little, riding my blue Giant mountain bike with my family on forest trails in the Czech Republic, I’d complain, if not outright cry, that it hurt and burned to sit or squat after a ride. I was told bike saddles just aren’t all that comfortable. My stepmom and I were experiencing the same issues, sore for days, which only added to the impression that pain is an inherent part of cycling.

So I went with it. As a woman, I’ve been curled up in pain every 28 days since my teenage years; the postride crotch pain wasn’t that bad in comparison. For how infrequent my rides were, it was what it was.

Once I became an editor at Bicycling, I started finding myself in a saddle—and sore—more frequently. Yet I didn’t even comment on how uncomfortable the saddles of the bikes I rode and tested were anymore. No amount of adjustments—moving it up and down, or shifting it back and forth—would alleviate the pain they caused. I concluded that we were all together in this suffering for the things we love to do.

But then, early this spring, I read Bicycling’s “We Need to Talk About Cycling’s Silent Epidemic” (Bicycling
May/June 2024), in which writer Gloria Liu described how so many women quietly push through crotch pain and ride until they cause damage to their genitals.

The article talked about the lack of not only a conversation around the issue, but also, up until recently, practical solutions. In the end, it convinced me that riding a bike wasn’t supposed to be painful—at least not in the way it had been for me. And so I set on solving the issue for myself.

I discussed the details of the article with my fellow editor and riding partner, Mallory Creveling, during our next ride. I lamented at how expensive cycling gear is to go the trial-and-error route to get a better saddle, knowing so many in the past didn’t work for me. Mallory, who rides a Liv bike, offered to lend me a saddle from Liv, a cycling brand dedicated to women.

It was love at first ride.

The Liv Alacra SLR is wider and has a shorter nose than other saddles I’ve tried. It comes with a cutout in the middle instead of nearly puffing out like the saddle my bike came with. It supports my body in a way no other seat ever has. I didn’t need to adjust the way I sat on my bike throughout the ride. I wasn’t trying to relieve my genitalia by shifting forward and back every so often.

But here is the most exciting part: I didn’t need days to recover—I was good to go again the next day. In one ride, I unlearned so many of my (wrong) lifelong beliefs about cycling. Fast-forward to now, instead of every other week, I ride three or four times a week, my mileage quickly increasing alongside my excitement to take my bike for another spin.

I’ve since learned about measuring the width between my sit bones, and how to apply the knowledge to a saddle purchase. But that’s only one piece of the puzzle, as there is also the nose length and width, the possible cutout shape, and the seat position itself. It’s part luck that the Liv saddle happened to work for me—as there are so many variables to everyone’s body—and part fact that it was made with women in mind to start with. Many saddles, I learned, are built to support the male pelvic floor, with wider noses by the genitals and narrower seats for the butt, the exact opposite of what works for me.

Too many women accept pain as an inevitable part of life, and that needs to stop, especially when a lot of it can be relieved, lessened, or even prevented.

This is not to say that riding a bike is a completely pain-free experience. There can be a certain amount of discomfort that comes with holding the same position and activating quads and glutes for hours on end. Still, none of that should be extremely painful or debilitating, requiring days of recovery after a single ride.

Too many women accept pain as an inevitable part of life, and that needs to stop, especially when a lot of it can be relieved, lessened, or even prevented. We should never quit questioning negative experiences for fear that we’ll come across as annoying. We ought to voice our concerns, however uncomfortable, until things change for the better.

READ MORE ON: bike gear saddle women's cycling