Knee Problems

I'm not sure if it was mentioned in the previous posts, but for the past few days my right knee was beginning to give me problems. The pain was located on the left edge of my knee cap. At this point, I've talked to a few people and did some Google searching to find out how to fix it. Mike (the French touring guy biking to San Francisco) said he had a similar problem and said it was because of the clip pedals. He moved his clips back and that fixed it. I also heard that a low seat and general overuse could cause knee pain.

I started with moving the clips back and that seemed to help at first but didn't do much. Then I just completely stopped using my clip in pedals, because I also read that it can restrict lateral movement in the foot and force you to pedal in an unnatural way. After  a couple days of not using the clips my knee felt much better. I also rose my seat up and that helped, along with taking a few easy days.

On the way from McKenny Campground to Lewis and Clark Park, I bought some cheap regular pedals in Centralia to replace my clip pedals.

The pedals were screwed in pretty tightly. I only managed to get the right one replaced. I bent Stephanie's wrench trying to get the left one off, oops (Yes, I know that it's opposite threaded and I made sure I was loosening Clockwise). Luckily the next place we stayed (Toutle River RV Resort) let me borrow their wrench and I was able to replace the left pedal then.

We also met another touring bicyclist at the Toutle RV Resort, who said that every person he knew who started out with clip pedals, when touring, stopped using them after about a week.