Monday, May 28, 2007

Update!

Sorry it's been so long since I've blogged. This week, like every week it seems, was pretty busy.

I spent a lot of time this week messing with my position on the bike. I was pretty unsatisfied with my "wedging" process, which I discussed last Monday. Essentially, while my knee was tracking better, I felt like I was using so many wedges that I was treating the symptom, not the cause. I also spent a lot of time browsing through the form articles on Cycling News.

What I ultimately determined, I think, was that my saddle was too high. This was causing me to drop my right hip, which was causing my left knee to move outward at the top of the pedal stroke. So, I dropped my saddle and took out most of the wedges I had put on my left shoe (I kept one, since I did measure about a 7 degree varus on my left foot).

One of the recommendations in the Cycling News articles was that your saddle should be low enough that you are "fluent" at the bottom of your pedal stroke. I had thought I was a pretty smooth pedaler, until I dropped my saddle this week. Dropping the saddle made a huge difference in the way my pedal stroke feels. It just feels buttery smooth now, even in hard gears. This is a major change; I used to get very choppy in hard gears with the old position.

As for my knee, lowering the saddle reduced the lateral movement considerably. If I'm not concentrating on good form, I still see a little movement in the harder gears. If I am concentrating on good form, there's no lateral movement that I can see. I am feeling a little muscle fatigue around my knees, but I dropped my saddle enough that I'm not too surprised about this. I expect it to go away within another week or so as I adapt to the new position.

Once my knee feels OK on the bike, I'm going to start a very basic running program. If nothing else, I want to demonstrate to myself that I've solved the problem. I was a little concerned about running too much during the season, but, as Sarah pointed out, the amount of running I'm talking about here won't amount to much more than a warm-up for me (probably just 20-30 minute sessions).

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