Truisms part one.

Ya know, those little sayings like "A penny saved is a penny earned"?  Those truisms like grandpa used to spout out; little bits of truth and wisdom, hard learned over generations and distilled down into as few words as possible.

I have some of those that may not be so well known, but work nicely for my purposes.  Here is one.  If something all of a sudden begins to work poorly that has been working well for ages, ask yourself "What changed?".

Example - for the past two weeks I have been working my way through some knee pain in the right knee.  That is the one I tore up in martial arts training so I am not surprised if it complains every so often.  This was a bit different.  It was hard to pin down the why and what of it.  Did I push too hard on a ride?  I do recall twice where I was working too big a gear for a quick rise in the trail and I had brief, burning pain under the kneecap...oops, time to shift down here.  I thought maybe that was it but the pain that was lingering was not in that location.  It seemed as much muscular as anything with an odd bit for referred pain to it.  Since nothing came to mind as to a cause, and riding did not seem to hurt any more than not riding, I was trying to work my way through it with the uneasy feeling in the back of my mind, that, if I could not figure out a cause here, maybe I was just wearing out and this was the first signs of diminished abilities?  That scared me a bit as I had not increased my miles or efforts lately.

I stayed off the SS but standing on the geared bike felt OK; so did sitting and spinning, but afterwards...pain and discomfort.  Then, it hit me.  I had forgotten the old adage, "What changed"?

New shoes.  Yep.  About the time this began I had done a 4 hour ride on some new shoes I am reviewing.  Could it simply be a cleat/shoe alignment thing?  How simple!  Why did I not think of that right away?  Last night I slipped into my old shoes and that was that.  Immediate improvement even though I could not feel any significant change in foot position between the two.  What a dope I am.

Truism #1 - If what's always worked before does not work any more, ask yourself what changed.

More truisms to come.