some_guy282

I'm just now starting to ride my bike again after spending four and a half months off of it due to abductor tendinitis (upper inner thigh). I'm spending relatively small amounts of time riding, and generally taking it easy. Some soreness is being experienced, but it's not just in the area I was suffering tendinitis in.


Saddle soreness - specifically, my penis falling asleep. This would occasionally happen to me before the tendinitis, but generally only after riding for long periods of time. It would quickly go away when I stopped riding or took a rest so I never quite got around with trying to tweak my saddle to stop it. Now however it was happening to me very quickly into my rides.

Knee pain - Specifically, the front of my knees. Never experienced it before. Also happening quickly into my rides.

Right Achilles tendon - Like the pain in my knees, this was also totally new and would begin almost immediately after starting to ride.

Upon doing some searches to determine the possible causes of these three issues, I came up with the following possibilities from old threads: my crotch falling asleep was likely due to my seat being too high, forcing me to lean too far forward to reach my handlebars. The saddle being too high was supported by explanations of Achilles pain (ankling to reach the pedals, which I WAS doing...). BUT, pain in the front of the knee is said to have the exact opposite cause - the saddle being too low.

So I decided to go with the best two out of three and lower the saddle a bit to see what happened. The saddle was lowered all of an inch and a half, and the pain in my right ankle and my saddle soreness immediately disappeared. Predictably the knee pain persists, and if anything it has gotten slightly worse.

I rode this bike from November of last year until about March of this year with no knee pain or ankle pain with the same setup, so I'm wondering if conditioning might have anything to do with this. Should I just pedal through the knee pain in the hopes that it will go away as I get back into shape again? If not, any ideas on what I should think about changing to try and get a better fit? Any and all help appreciated.

ericgu

You don't say how much you're riding, but if you aren't riding very hard/much, you shouldn't be having any of those symptoms.

i was going to give you lots of separate advice, but I think you need to find somebody who can do a real bike fit for you. My guess is your saddle height is likely still wrong (and 1 1/4" are a huge amount to move - I generally move mine perhaps 1/8" at a time), that you might have cleat alignment issues, and you may need a new saddle as well.

Do not try to ride through the pain. Knee pain is an indication that something is wrong with fit, and because the knee is the weakest joint, it usually shows up there first.

some_guy282

The distances are pretty short - generally five miles at a time or less. I sure hope I don't have to switch out my brooks...