Discussions with all sorts of other cyclists, triathletes, coaches and anybody vaguely sport-related have left me with a whole wealth of different reasons that the knee is playing up from overuse to cleat-position. One of the interesting discussions I had was about the fact that the knee that is playing up is the one that always pushes off whenever I start cycling. The outcome of this chat was basically that I should just use the other foot for a while when I cleat and uncleat and see if it makes a difference. Simple.
The idea that I wouldn't be able to complete this manoeuvre successfully didn't even occur to me. I approached the first major junction I came to this morning, uncleated from the pedal and went to rest my foot on the floor. What happened next was really rather embarrassing. As I came to a stop, I was already off balance with the wrong foot providing pedal stability. I must have shifted too much weight to that side and by that point it was too late. I tried to regain my balance but I couldn't and I decked out at the junction. Even worse than that, I couldn't uncleat my foot that was underneath the bike so I was wriggling about on the floor in the middle of the road attempting to lift the bike up enough so I could get the angle. It felt like I was down there for about five minutes.. whilst it probably wasn't quite as long as that it was enough time for the lights to go through a whole stage of green and then back to red again. Fortunately it was before 7am on a bank holiday Monday and in an incredible stroke of luck, there was not a single vehicle either behind me or at any of the other junctions - not a single witness!
Eventually I picked myself up, dusted off the grit, got the chain back in the right place, was momentarily impressed with my bleeding elbow and then decided I probably wouldn't try that again today.
For the record, the rest of the ride was lovely and the knee only played up at the very end as I started to cool down!
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