Thigh pain

dot1

I commute 6.5 miles each way everyday and quite often after about 3 or so miles, I get a lot of pain in what I think is probably the gracilis muscle. Doesn't matter whether I'm on flats or SPD's, and only tends to reduce once I've changed down a few gears and slowed right down. I'm by no means gunning it in top gear or anything like that. It's not the same sort of burning pain/discomfort from lactic acid, more of a pain that would suggest I'm doing some damage. Anyone know what could be causing it/how it could be remedied? I'm thinking it could possibly be a saddle positioning problem, but I'm not too knowledgable on that side of things.

If it helps, I ride a Boardman Pro MTB, 1x9, 38T chainring with a 32-12 cassette. Spend most of my time in 5-8th gear.

pete_s

Could be your saddle too high which causes you to over stretch when pusing down on the pedal. I read somewhere that most people have their saddle too high, even when they think they've adjusted it down quite a bit. I was getting loads of aches and pains when I started adjusting my bike, and all of them were from the saddle being too high. There's loads of old-wives tale type of advice on how to determine the right height. For me it was the one where you're standing on the pedal with your leg fully extended and then moving the saddle up to bridge the gap between the seat and the crotch. Even then I had to take it down 10mm.

The problem with tracking down the cause of a pain is that it can take a long time. You can only really adjust one thing at a time and then you've got to get used to the new position which can take around 10miles of riding before you know if you've got it right.

gosport_commuter

+1 to the saddle too high thing, I gained a similar pain earlier in the year when I raised mine slightly. dropped it back by 5mm or so and the next week I had no pain.

The Rookie

+2, I set my saddle so that with my HEEL on the pedal my knee is still just bent, that way you should never get it over flxing and locking.

Secondly make sure you keep your cadance up, it takes a bit of practice, but I find all effort based muscle pains are helped by that.