Wedges

My wedges came in today. Today was supposed to be an off day for me, so at first I only did a quick wedge fitting and test... maybe 5 minutes on the bike at most. I started with 2 on the left shoe and 1 on the right.

I had some dinner and then decided that I needed to do some more extended testing of the wedges. I popped in an easy Spinervals DVD and got to work. After a few minutes of pedaling, it looked like my right knee had more lateral movement with 1 wedge than it did with none, so I took it out. My left knee still had some lateral movement, so I added a 3rd wedge. It seemed to help a little more, but there was still some lateral movement. At this point, I decided to stop adding wedges; my thought was that I may just need to retrain the pedal stroke of my left leg. So, I ended up with 3 wedges on my left shoe and 0 on the right.

So, my impressions:

• Left knee lateral movement is considerably smaller than with no wedges, but it's still noticeable. Remaining left knee movement may be from bad habits.
• My left leg felt much more "free" than normal at high cadences.
• Pedal pressure on my left foot was more uniform. My left big toe didn't fall asleep as it sometimes does, but that may be because the ride was short and I stopped a few times to adjust things.
• Calf tight spot was still present afterward, but not too bad.

The plan now is to ride like this for a little while and live with the new position. I can feel already that some different muscles in my left leg got used, and I wouldn't be surprised if I end up a little tender from it tomorrow. I suspect that I may end up going back to 2 wedges on my left shoe, but we'll see, 3 just feels like a little too much.