Having a real issue with pain/tenderness in the back of my left knee, I recently changed bike – from a 29er F/S to a 650b F/S with SRAM’s 11 speed drivetrain and on my first ride around Twrch at Cwmcarn I ended the ride very sore. Upon looking it up, all advice seemed to point to the saddle being too high, so I dropped it to exactly the measurement of inseam X 0.838, however, this is as low as I can go with the Reverb (that’s to say without dropping it)

Then, stupidly I know, went and did Twrch again the following day and finished with even more pain, so gave it a rest for a couple of weeks and on a ride last weekend had exactly the same issue.

I ride clipped in but always have and have never had any issues, I did get new pedals but there is even more float in these than the previous ones.

The cranks are 175mm, would going to 170mm make any difference, it’s a big outlay. I’ve even considered going to flat pedals.

Any advice would be really appreciated as this is seriously pissing me off.

Did you think about seat position. It may be farther forward/back or possibly the angle of the seat?

Afraid it sounds like too high saddle like you said. I would pick up a cheapy seatpost and try it at the lower position you think you need it at. If the pain goes away I’m afraid you’ll have to ditch the reverb other options could be a saddle with lower overall height, shorter cranks, or even pedals / shoe soles that have more thickness.

I had pain in the back of the left knee, I kept ignoring it and riding through it and it took several months to heal properly.

I’d give it a rest and get some ice on it before it turns into a more significant injury.

I haven’t tried different saddle positions yet as it seemed spot on, but it may well be worth a shot.

That’s a good idea about the cheapy seatpost and I think you’re right about the danger of it turning into a significant injury if ignored.

Having done the test here page (the pedalling backwards one) it looks like the saddle needs to be about 3cm below its current minimum; I slowly lowered the Reverb until my hips stopped rocking. I’m not going to be able to achieve that through changing cranks; shoes etc.

Since I’ve only had three rides (due to the pain after each one) on the bike and I only bought it three weeks ago, would I be best off returning to the shop? The fitment in the shop was very brief, it was really only used to gauge how much hose to cut off of the Reverb, and I then had to rush off to pick my daughter up from school so we couldn’t do a more thorough job which was obviously very unfortunate as we would have picked this up there and then.

What do you think their attitude will be? They seem like a really sound bunch and it’s a well known national chain.