New knee pain

[nscrbug]

Ahhh...good call, Oakleaf. You may be onto something there. My Northwaves do seem to have a lower profile than the Sidi. I wonder if the difference in soles could be positioning me higher in the saddle? Would that cause lateral knee pain? I always thought saddle too high = back of knee pain. Mine is situated on the side of the knee...not quite the back.

[OakLeaf]

Just visualizing it, it seems to me that it would make your seat height effectively too low, not too high. A taller shoe would decrease the distance from saddle to pedaling surface.

Knee pain (and swelling) similar to what you describe is what happens to me when my knees are bent too much at the top of the pedal stroke - though I never had an issue with sole height that I'm aware of. Right in the lateral notch between the patella and femur.

Maybe just try raising the seat height a millimeter or two.

[zoom-zoom]

If my cleat rotation is off by much at all I instantly get pissy pains in my knees. I'd suspect that before I'd suspect anything else, personally.

[nscrbug]

Thanks for the tips and advice, everyone! I guess I also should have mentioned that I already do have shims in place on both my old Northwaves and these new Sidi shoes. By shims, I'm referring to a thin, yellow plastic shim that is placed between the cleat and the sole of the shoe. I should also mention that my Northwaves had a carbon-reinforced sole...whereas, the Sidi Ergo 2's have a full carbon sole. Not that it really matters, though. But just from looking at a sideview of both shoes...the Northwaves sit a bit lower and flatter to the ground than the Sidis do. Even if you were to Google a pic of both shoes...you can immediately see a difference in the side profile of the shoes.

Yeah, I'm just perplexed (and frustrated) by this new knee pain. Mainly because this is happening on my brand new custom Seven that I just recently got. I've been riding it for a few weeks now, and up until yesterday...had no knee pain whatsoever...so I'm not entirely clear on why this has suddenly cropped up, unless it really is due to the new shoes. I just emailed my fitter explaining everything to him...so I'm sure he'll have some insight on what we can do to correct it.

[indysteel]

I hope your fitter is able to sort it out. To me, it sounds a bit like an ITB issue. One thing I'd add is the word of warning that my fitter gave me every time we adjusted something on one of my bikes or to my interface with the bike: After an adjustment, go for several short/easy rides first before committing to anything long or hard. I'm tempted to give you a gentle finger wagging for continuing to ride 60 miles while in that kind of pain.

[Wahine]

I do bike fitting and these are the things that I would think about, most others have already mentioned:

1) If the sole of the new shoe is thicker you will have to change the saddle height slightly upward as Oakleaf mentioned.
2) The cleat rotation may be off. Believe me, no matter how many bikes I fit, I still can reverse the rotation I want once in a while and it's really easy to shift the rotation slightly on one side as you tighten the cleat. Or maybe the cleat wasn't quite tight enough and it rotated a bit as you unclipped last.
3) See if where your foot is in the shoe is the same and/or the position of the cleat mount is the same. What I mean is, if in your old shoes X part of the cleat lines up with y part of your foot, make sure it's the same on the new shoes.

I hope that helps a bit.

[zoom-zoom]

2) The cleat rotation may be off. Believe me, no matter how many bikes I fit, I still can reverse the rotation I want once in a while and it's really easy to shift the rotation slightly on one side as you tighten the cleat. Or maybe the cleat wasn't quite tight enough and it rotated a bit as you unclipped last.

I have had this happen several times. Once I get cleats where I want them I trace around them with silver paint pen to mark where they should be...then it's obvious if they get skewed.