The difference that a centimeter makes

I knew something was wrong with my position on the Azure. At first my mind was explaining it away as cummulative fatigue, allergies, etc. But on rides the last two days I just couldn't turn the pedals over and had to just plain get off and walk several times on Old Farm and Beast. Now I am not saying that I'm so good that I don't ever have to walk. Yet for months I've been riding fairly well on those trails, maybe not like years past but definitely decent riding.

My left hamstring had been tender too. Deep in the belly of the muscle. I also noticed that my hip flexors hadn't been a sore as when on the hardtail. It's so obvious that my saddle had shifted on the rails given that this has happened several times before. The saddle has ti rails and this seatpost has a known issue with not being able to hold fore/aft position. When the saddle slides back, it effectively lengthens the saddle height. A telltale sign of a saddle that is too high is sore hamstrings. And for me, diminished capacity for leg turnover and good spin.

I pushed the saddle forward today and rode for a third day in a row on Brush. The result:
18:55 up OF. So that is 1 minute off of yesterday and 1:40 something off the day before. But keep in mind that today is the third day of hard riding and cumulative fatigue. So after 2 hard rides I'm now posting a faster time? I think the time savings would have been much more had I not been tired. Yesterday I climbed the beast and was just shut down several times. Today, it was noticeably different.I'm hurting for certain today. So bad that I took the offer for a ride home from the trail head. One thing though is that being tired, I just physically couldn't blow up like I had a few days ago. With out complete blowups I never did slow way down after a technical section.

It just amazes me the sensitivity to certain elements of position. Sure I can feel if my brake levers are even slightly rotated or if my cleat position has shifted a mm. But the actual affect of the saddle fore/aft on my legs was amazing. This shift for practically shut the legs down.

My body is tired. Especially my upper body. My right shoulder is tweaked a little. I'd messed it up in cross fit doing some shoulder presses where the bar had bruised the top of a little bone on the collar, but now the front muscles of the shoulder are hurting.

I see another crest forming for riding either this upcoming week or two weeks from now. I'm setting a goal to try and get the OF time down to sub 16 from the wood fence to the top.