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Youngest daughter is a quite a handy enduro rider now, but she complains of a sore backside whilst climbing. She has some decent padded shorts but wants a "soft" saddle.
Any recommendations? All the womens specific saddles are 180-250mm wide and thats not good for her riding style. Needs to be normal width.
Go to a local shop, get measured. See if said shop has a loaner saddle or two. Keep experimenting.
I'm sure you know that soft does not always equate to more comfort.
(And keep up with really decent padded shorts,not cheapo ones)
Find a bike fit type place that can measure sit bones - and ideally that might have a few loan saddles to try.
On the shorts front make sure they are really decent shorts in terms of the lad. Cheaper ones often have a hefty / clunky pad that’s soft but doesn’t always work amazingly well. Planet X 360 shorts fall into this category for me - immmuch happier with endura fs260 bibs for road or dhb aeron waist shorts for mtb.
All the womens specific saddles are 180-250mm wide and thats not good for her riding style. Needs to be normal width.
Plenty of narrower female specific saddles around - MrsP has a 155 Spesh power mimic (mimic is their female specific saddle shape) which is pretty compact and I think there's a 140 ish width variant too.
You can measure sit bones at home, but shops will sometimes have trial saddles they can lend you for a week or two so you don't make an expensive mistake.
How old is she? There's a host of good junior saddles like the SDG Jnr fly and the Nukeproof Urchin, the latter is 137mm wide and the former 122.
My eldest (boy) is 10 and he's just gone from a SDG jnr fly as he complained it was hurting a bit on long rides to a Vitus Ti one (off my CX bike) with a cut out that's 137mm wide and loves it, no complaints after 3 hours on the bike last weekend.
BTW there's no normal width of saddles, all mine are 143mm and I have liking for the Spesh Power Expert, I also have a Spesh Bridge on one of my bikes and it's excellent for a long nosed saddle.
As others have said, saddles are so personal that it's best to try and borrow some to test out. One of my more comfy saddles is actually one of the narrowest and firmest I own whereas a WTB one that came on my new gravel bike feels horrible as it's got too much padding. I think female specific is also a bit misleading as there is such a wide range of sizes in both women and men.
If you're anywhere near North Bedfordshire then I'll happily lend you some saddles to try out.
Ergon and Sqlab do templates for measuring sit bones and saddles to.match. I have 4 Ergon saddles, having tried one.
Yeah, I was going to suggest Ergon.
Easy enough to measure sit bone width at home... bit of cardboard, hard chair and a rule.
Get yourself and daughter to a Specialized dealer and get measured then choose a Spesh saddle and if you don’t like it you have 30 days to return for a full refund. Repeat until comfortable….
+1 for Spesh dealers as they can probably measure. Though I have also had Ergon saddles which are great as long as you get the right width…
Love my WTB Speed V settee.Proper old school bike saddle.Dreading the day when it needs replaced.
Also going to depend on what she means by sore. Is that a “too much pressure” sore or a chaffing/rubbing sore. 1 could be saddle and the other almost certainly fit but which is which … welcome to the world of bike fitting 😉
Defo agree with the others here though - go see spesh and make use of the try or return option they offer.
You should probably be prepared for a fairly anatomically specific discussion with your daughter!