Originally Posted by
Iride01
Might just be your knee telling you to slack up on the resistance for a while. If you were grinding out a steady 800 watts for those 30 minutes at 50 rpm, that's going to be more pressure on your knee than a steady 800 watts for 30 minutes at 80 rpm.
You can substitute any number you want for the avg. watts. I just pulled that out of my ....
Since I posted, I've done some research and have come up with a hypothesis. There IS indeed a muscle in that very area of the knee and shin...the sartorius muscle. It's a long, thin muscle, not really strong, and it's possible it's being overworked because of a muscle imbalance. I have some funky shaped calves, bowed more than average, and I'm also quite pronated. That, combined with the narrow q-factor could be the cause. I ride a mountain crank wearing flats outdoors, and I don't think I have nearly the same problem. I've adjusted my cleats a little for riding the trainer, and threw in an additional washer on that side of the pedal. I think my foot prefers to point out a bit, like a duck, but with the narrow q-factor, it's not able to. I suspect a cleat adjustment won't be sufficient, so I will add a pedal extender. That will raise the q-factor to that of the mountain crank i use outdoors.