Comfort is one of the hallmark features of riding a recumbent trike. When one moves from an upright, or Diamond Frame (DF) bike to a recumbent trike, one of the things one realizes fairly quickly is all of the things that don’t hurt anymore when riding. Your hands aren’t numb from resting on the handlebars, your neck and shoulders aren’t sore from being hunched over on the road bike, and the idea of chamois butter never occurs to you any more.
For this reason I was rather surprised this summer when I started to experience pain in my lower back on a ride. I was on what is, for me, an extended ride of about 50 miles, but the pain started about 25 miles in. I took a couple of breaks on the ride to get off and move around, which did help, but the issue kept recurring. As I thought through it while riding it finally occurred to me to consider that the seat mesh might need to be tightened. So I found a spot to pull off to the side of the road and I gave them a yank, and sure enough, I was able to tighten them and regain the lumbar support that the mesh seat had lost. The seat instantly felt better, and I was comfortable for the remaining 8-10 miles of that ride.
Seat straps
But while I initially thought all was better, what I found was that it was now a recurring - and seemingly worsening issue. Over subsequent rides I found myself stopping at least once or twice per ride to adjust it, and during the Freemondo I had to stop and adjust it at least four times over the 63-mile course. Given that I had other extended rides coming up, I wanted to find a way to address the issue.
My Catrike Expedition is only three years old - I received delivery of it in July of 2019 - but I have put over 6000 miles on it since it arrived. It seemed that I’d perhaps reached the lifespan of the original seat. Before I made that assumption - and dropped the $200 or so for such an item - I decided to take the question to the Catrike Owners Group on Facebook. I got several suggestions for addressing the issue - means for repairing rather than replacing the seat, and multiple suggestions for a product that I’ve seen referenced before - the Ventisit.
But one suggestion (thanks John!) struck both my curiosity, and my simplicity and cheapness genes all at the same time. The idea was to take bits of pool noodle and cut them to size to put inside the seat in the general lumbar region. This idea was not only inexpensive and easily obtained (e.g. Amazon or swing by your local big box store), but actually, for me, free and at hand as my offspring had brought home a batch of them a couple of years ago. They’ve been occupying space on the back porch for a while now - I figured I might as well put one of them to work.
This was a simple operation - I got a noodle and a utility knife, eyeballed the size of the space between the space frame bars on either side of the seat, marked it with my thumb, and cut it (yes - you should probably measure twice before you cut once, but I was rich with pool noodles, so I threw caution to the wind). In eyeballing I did make it a little long, figuring it was going to need to press against the bars to stay in place.
Eyeballing things
Once I got it cut I inserted it into the space between the front and back of the seat. I had to loosen the straps just a bit to do this. I positioned it in the general lumbar region by feel, getting on and off the trike a couple of times. Once it was in place I tightened the straps back up and took it out for a ride.
Noodling it into place
That first ride was a bit of a revelation - it felt much better! But over the next couple of outings I began to notice that, after a few miles, the noodle was acting as a pressure point. Now instead of a dull ache I had a sharp pain in that spot, which was not a reasonable trade-off. I tried moving it up and down a bit, which helped, but only temporarily. And stopping periodically to move the noodle wasn’t really any better than stopping periodically to tighten the straps.
What I reasoned, though, was that it was becoming a pressure point because it was too small - a bulge in a single, small vertical area. So I went back and cut a second section of noodle to put in with the first one. This made for a larger lumbar area, and reduced the amount of pressure on any single point in my back.
You can see where it falls for me on the seat - the noodle is where you can’t see thru the mesh:
The non-see-thru part is where the noodle is at.
All of this experimenting happened between the Freemondo and TŌSOC, so that second extended ride through scenic Ogle County was the testing ground for this approach.
The long and short of it: It works!
I got through the 62-miles of TŌSOC without any significant back pain, and without needing to adjust the seat. The noodles seem to stay in place without issue, so once you have them positioned where they work for you it seems to be essentially a set it and forget it arrangement. And it’s far less expensive than alternative solutions.
TL/DR:
In sum: If you are finding that you are experiencing lower back pain while riding your recumbent trike, you may be able to address the issue quickly and inexpensively by cutting pool noodles to size and inserting them in the space between the front and back sides of the seat. Some things to be aware of with this:
- There are different sizes and shapes of pool noodle. I used ones with a sort of clover shape to them because those were what I had at home already. You may find that a different size or shape works better for you.
- You may need to insert one or more of them into the space depending upon your height and how the noodle impacts your back.
- Expect to spend a bit of time adjusting the location between and during rides while you dial-in the correct position for you.
- The trike I did this with is my Catrike Expedition. It’s clear to me that it would work nicely with other trikes of a similar frame and mesh seat design - for example, I can easily see using this on my Catrike Pocket if I needed to, as it’s a very similar design. Your mileage may vary depending on how your machine is designed.