dubious.biz(ness)

Over the past few week I have been experiencing a lot of knee pain during my cycling rides. Of course this sort of thing is a little concerning considering that I’m going to be cycling 100km every day. If I can’t cycle 60km without knee pain in a single day, what would 100km do.

I think that a lot of knee pain recommendations are pretty poor, having gone through most of them so far and now having a much better idea of what actually seems to work and what doesn’t, I’d like to note it for world-reference…

First, and most importantly is to locate your knee pain and determine it’s duration. Knee pain typically occurs on anterior (front), posterior (back), medial(inner side), and lateral (outer side) areas of the knee. The duration is generally either after warmup, during exercise, immediately during exercise, in the following day after exercise, everyday. Cycling Performance Tips has a good but unprioritised list of treatment suggestions for the various locations of knee pain.

Cycling puts smoothly cycling loads on the knee but the loads can be significant. Almost all cycling knee pain is from overuse injuries, not from strain injuries (overloading or overextension). These can be exacerbated by anatomical irregularities (such as leg length discrepancy), biomechanical errors (not pedalling correctly/seat position incorrect), and training errors (too many hills, too many miles).

So basically, you fix the real issue, the fact that you’re doing one pedaling motion all day, by trying to minimize the error. Ultimately you will always cure overuse injuries with rest, but this isn’t something that most cyclists (or any athelete) is interested in. But it needs to be said, one of the best treatments for any sports injury is RICE: rest, ice, compression, and elevation. All athletes would prefer not to rest, it takes away valuable training time and gives the competition an advantage. But performing suboptimally due to injury and the significant risk of more serious problems means that RICE treatment is critical during any injury.

My pain was anterior, and during exercise (specifically during high loads).

The first suggestion for any cyclist knee pain is the same as that of runners’ knee pain. The IT (iliotibial) band runs on the lateral side of the leg from the hip to just below the knee. Its main purpose is to stablize the legs laterally when the quadriceps and gluts are exercised. The IT band causes the knee pain because it pulls tightly and puts undue lateral stress on the knee during the exercise. While this pain is typically lateral, it was a factor in my knee injury, which was anterior.

Stretch: A lateral leg stretch is a good first step to try to tease out the IT band. I would recommend this stretch after warm-up and after a ride. Ultimately even if the IT band is not the cause of injury the relative lack of range of motion in cycling is going to spell bad news for your IT band eventually.

However IT band syndrome is generally caused by bike fit and foot placement on the pedal. This is also the cause of most anterior pain and a general stop on the trail to knee injury recovery anyway, so this was the next area to tackle.

Saddle fit: There are a thousand different ways to fit your saddle to your bike. I have read a number of them and will stick to the the DON’Ts rather than the DOs, because people tend to have strong beliefs about bike fit without a lot of rationale.

Saddle Height:

• Your saddle should be low enough that your heels can touch the pedal all the way through the stroke. Most important is the furthest point from your body which should be when it is parallel to the seat tube.
• The saddle should be low enough that your hips do not rock from side to side when you cycle. Have someone cycle behind you and sit firmly in the saddle to check this.
• Your seat can be as low as you like, but if it is too low, you risk losing power in your stroke and anterior knee pain. The general rule is that you keep your seat as high as possible while fufilling the above conditions, I prefer a bit lower than as high as possible.

Saddle fore-aft position

• A forward position of the saddle will put your weight over the pedals but make it harder to hold yourself up because less of your weight is on the saddle. You will tend to sit more upright in the saddle and thus have more drag.
• An aft-position of the saddle will put your weight on the saddle and behind the pedals, which puts more stress on your knees but is more comfortable for your arms if you ride on the bars/hoods.
• So, as far forward as you can go without making supporting yourself uncomfortable but not so far that your knee is behind the axle of the pedal at any time. We will discuss this more in the pedalling motion.
• Also note that because your seat tube is not vertical if you move the seat aft, you should have to raise it slightly while moving it fore will lower it slightly.

Saddle Angle

• FLAT! If you are pushing the nose down or up you can’t sit on it. Stop kidding yourself that your saddle is light, expensive, made by italians, etc. Get a new, comfortable saddle that serves your needs and, if you must, fit back your crappy race saddle on race day.

Amazingly my saddle was already in this green zone, so I was on to the next fitment area, pedal and cleat. Clipless pedals are a great benefit to the pedal stroke but few come with suggestions on how to fit them. If the cleat is too fore/aft you will pedal toes down or up. That’s fine if this is your preferred style but try it neutral first. Pedalling toes down means that your calves will be tightened most of the stroke. Using your calves can be a good boost to your pedal stroke but you can’t have sore, tight calves every day. More importantly for knee pain is the medial/lateral position of the pedal. If the Pedal is placed close to the medial (inside) of the foot, it will place more force on the lateral side of your body, straining your IT band and also causing the heels to rotate inward. Likewise the reverse is true if it is placed too laterally. This medial/lateral position is also influenced by the width of your hips relative to the width of your pedals. You can shim out your pedals and cranks or you can try to adjust out your pedals.

Clipless Cleat fit

• Wear your cycling shoe and mark the bottom of the shoe where it is widest on both sides. Take off the shoe and connect the lines. Where they intersect the cleat mount is where you should position your cleats.
• If you prefer a toes down stroke (where you press your toes out) move the pedal closer to your toes.
• If you prefer a heels down stroke move it to the heels.
• Be honest: do you have wide hips? Do you have lateral or lateral-anterior knee pain? Then move the cleat to a more lateral position (toward the outside of the foot).
• If you have medial knee pain or narrow hips, move your cleats toward the medial (inside).

These changes brought a serious improvement in my next ride. I actually had them set up terribly, so the new arrangement was much better for power and pain relief. But on hills pain still remained. Cue the final page in my knee pain search… biomechanical position.

If you are experiencing knee pain, fit your bike again. But more than likely you are making one of the following mistakes in your stroke or training:

• Knees rotate laterally or medially during the downward stroke.
• Heels rotate laterally or medially during the downward stroke.
• Ankle roll downward and inward or outward.

Essentially the proper stroke is a vertical plane where the knee moves straight in line with the shoulder and the feet. My major problem was that I tended to bow out my left knee, probably a habit from rowing, this was causing my heel to rotate inward only slightly and putting undue lateral and anterior stress on the knee. If your knees move inward toward the top tube, you may be reducing knee stress but it is not necessarily an efficient stroke. This sort of biomechanical training is critical in early training, particularly in long distance rides where you won’t move from the seat and essentially remain in the same stroke all day for as many days as you need to.

Unfortunately nothing is going to get you to pedal in that perfect stroke except a lot of retraining. That retraining is best done in superlow gears with cadences in the 80-90rpm range with very little work. Look down at your knee and watch for discrepancies, particularly outward movement. When in big gears the effect is magnified so look down while you’re spinning in a higher gear to check the progress.

I’ve been retraining myself for about 4 sessions now and the knee pain is gone. I can’t necessarily say I’m more efficient but I’m certainly not scared of a 6 hr ride now.

I thought I should give an update on the cycle to Sarajevo. The first thing was to drop a lot of cash. I do honestly enjoy spending money perhaps a bit too much but a lot of the decisions were requirements for the trip to go off without a hitch. As a small bit of justification I am going to be cycling unsupported for about 5 weeks, over 1600 miles. I don’t really want anything to go wrong and I need to plan for most possibilities. There won’t be anyone for me to fall back on and the last thing I want to do is to have to come home early.

So I am now the proud owner of a lot of touring kit. The camera charger is AWOL so I can’t catch a picture of it, which is really unfortunate because there’s a really great shot I have planned out. The things that I have bought are basically the things in the list that I needed. I don’t think that I have bought too much “extra” beyond what I was planning on purchasing, and I also don’t think I have very much more left to buy. Mostly I need a tent.

I just loaded up all panniers yesterday with dirty clothes (a pretty reasonable weight density I think) and took it out for a ride. I’ve done about 500km of riding this month so far, which is pretty good, but this was my first time with something like the touring rig I was planning on riding for the weeks. I don’t actually have much time left, and I almost certainly won’t have time to do a “dry run” of even a single night in the tent, though I may opt for one during may week while everyone else is partying.

I set off on a short ride, only 30km, but the bike felt fantastic. It was the feeling of being one with the road and connected through the cycle. With load on, the bike feels more like a motorcycle: it is neutral when upright and the side to side motion of sprinting is minimised even off the seat. It also has tremendous momentum pulling itself forward down hills. The gearing is reasonable going up, but then the hills I’m looking at aren’t too horrendous. It is a really beautiful feeling to ride the bike now and I’m glad that I didn’t cut corners buying it.

A few weekends ago, I went down to a map shop, Stanfords, in London. I was perhaps a bit eager to get maps and to be able to look at them but if maps is what you’re in to, they have it. They are the largest map shop I’ve ever seen, peddling to a time before Google Maps when getting detailed looks at foreign places was itself a bit foreign. I walked away with coverage for every leg of the trip except one, which is to be published in May.

So now I have a lot of pretty maps, a fantastic bike, gear, almost everything I need to go. As crazy as it sounds, the trip is a go.

One thing I have been trying to figure out myself is why exactly I decided to go on this trip. For the life of me I can’t really figure it out. Or rather, I know why I decided to go on it, but it seems the idea sprung in to my mind fully formed. I didn’t ever expect anyone else to go with me; I didn’t really expect to go alone either. I didn’t really have much idea of what it would be like at all. The idea went something like “ride my bike to Sarajevo”.

It is a small curiosity to me how these things happen in my psyche. Nearly everything I do works like this. I have rarely, if ever, been thwarted. I just decide what to do one day and that’s that. I get very frustrated without these ridiculous over-arching goals, particularly when the goal is fairly easy. I have to keep moving the chains forward or I give up (to use an American football metaphor lost on at least half my audience).

I also never really expect these things to happen. I didn’t really expect to do anything I’ve done and yet I leave myself with no other choice. If I don’t do this trip now, I’ve blown a wad of my money on something totally pointless and mostly irredeemable.

At any rate, I now daydream about it every day.I can’t wait and I already have the next two trips planned. Unfortunately those trips aren’t likely to happen any time soon for the same reason that this one has to happen now: bike trips aren’t really for the faint of heart, but they aren’t for the short of time either. 5 weeks is mildly generous (well, in theory by daily mileage) but my other hoped-for trips are far longer.

I wasn’t going to say where those trips were but I guess I can’t really hold back… first, some route through India, Tibet, Nepal. Second, either the US or Canada to Argentina through the Andes or as nearly as possible. And… Suffice to say the list goes on. I just hope I don’t get too old first.

PS: I have some thoughts on how I will keep loyal readers abreast of my trip. I don’t think I’ll be doing a blog post, I have some multimedia plans but nothing definite yet. I’ll inform the blog as soon as I’m sure. Please comment up and tell me if you’d be interested in video or audio recordings of the trip instead of the typical words and pictures schtick. I’m leaning strongly toward video but then I don’t know what that video would look like. I plan on making very minimal use of computing while on the trip, if possible less than once per week. I’d be mailing this stuff to someone to post on the net for you kids. Thoughts?

There have been recent news reports that CIA asked for Google’s help in spying. The tech industry has been moronic. It makes me sad to think that these are the journalists I rely on. Google sells search appliances, which are little boxes that sit on your network and let you search for stuff that’s already on your network. It comes with tech support but there is no team of engineers who work hard to ensure that everything you do online is available to the CIA.

The problem is that everyone in the tech media and news industry in general really have to get these hyped stories out so that they get the readers. They know damned well there’s no news there and if you read carefully you can see plainly that isn’t. But you can get away with anything in a headline and you can get away with nearly anything in the first few paragraphs. You just bury the realism to the bottom of the story and submit 1000 words so nobody reads that far.

I don’t know if anyone has noticed yet, but I have started putting a lot of stuff in to twitter rather than in to the blog. I was originally against twitter as a service because I thought it seemed an awful lot like a chat room (which it does if you don’t have any friends to follow) and I wasn’t interested. Lately I have become more (much more) enamored with the “microblogging” aspect of it.

Here’s the problem: I want the blog to be a regular outlet of what’s going on, not just when I’m bored, adamant, or frustrated. However a lot of time I don’t blog because I’m so busy when exciting things happen in my life that I don’t have time to give them justice. In this way, twitter’s 140 character limit is liberating. I want to keep people updated on this stuff as well as provide myself notes on what’s important.

I also have a page on friendfeed. Friendfeed makes a blog-like timeline that can tell you what’s going on with all my services. Seems like a good idea but it also seems very interim. If Google (and Friendfeed are exgooglers) were to finish their OpenSocial work, this wouldn’t be necessary as consuming these feeds would be trivia. A lot of the valley doesn’t like the idea of data siloing so the data silos will go away, don’t worry. My guess is that a big player (microsoft, google, yahoo, facebook) will be the one to do it because nobody else is big enough to be a destination.

Anyway, as a legend to my whereabouts:

• Blog: for long-form posts about interesting topics. Blog is here.
• Twitter: for current whereabouts, what’s going on, updated frequently (more than once per day). My twitters are also on the sidebar.
• Friendfeed: collects everything from flickr, twitter, blog, facebook, and more. My friendfeed is here but I’m not really living off friendfeed, just maintaining it so just comment via my blog…

catch me later :-)