Thanks for the reply, I'm sure there are a million small tweaks I could experiment with that haven't been tried yet but after all I have already done and the fact that this numb toes business seems to be rearing its head more often off the bike as well I think I am going to admit that Occam's Razor probably needs to be considered at this point. And the most obvious answer at this point is my foot is weird and doesn't respond well to pressure on the ball of the foot (it is primarily only the left one). I guess I will have to find a specialty bike store and talk to them. We have a triathlon specific one here and that might be a good place to start as the midfoot cleat seems to be most adopted by triathletes to save the calf muscles for the run. It does seem weird since this cleat placement seems to have gained some traction in the last 5 years (Joe Friel is a big proponent) that none of the regular bike shoe manufacturers wouldn't have drilled additional holes for cleat placement options in order to capture this market.