When Caroline Worrall discovered cycling at the age of 40, it was like discovering a superpower. On group rides, she was faster than others to the point where she sometimes wondered why everyone else was going so slow. Riding flat pedals on one of her early outings, she beat a group of men in a sprint. About five years in, after she’d progressed to regular 50- to 60-mile rides, she began to notice pain and swelling in her labia that forced her off the bike for stretches of time, even as long as a month. She tried at least 30 saddles over the course of a decade—none helped. Meanwhile the tissue grew thicker until she could no longer wear padded shorts on long rides. She briefly contemplated surgery.
In 2009, Jacqueline McClure, then 26, got on her mom’s old steel Panasonic with down-tube shifters and rode 100 miles on California’s Highway 1. Her first elite racing team gave her a men’s Specialized S-Works saddle, which she rode for almost two seasons even though she was plagued by sores. She eventually switched saddles, but her problems persisted—and the sores progressed to permanent swelling on one side. When she told bike fitters, who were almost always men, they stared at her wide-eyed. Once a gynecologist asked, “What happened to you?” She responded, “I ride a bike all day.” Now 40, McClure hasn’t raced for three years, and rides much less than before, but until recently her labia remained lopsided. “As a woman,” she says, “it makes you feel a little damaged.”
Like many Americans, Hannah Knapp, 29, started cycling during the pandemic. She loved it immediately, but she could never ride more than 10 miles on her hardtail mountain bike before saddle pain overwhelmed her. Longtime female cyclists told her this was normal, that she’d get used to it. But six months later it still hurt.
Leave a Reply