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whilst maintaining my modesty! We completed that first day with no great
dramas and Katie and I seemed to be getting along just fine.

Day 2: We were heading South straight down through France, basically on a
tour of the wine regions, had we thought this through in advance I am sure
we could have planned much more interesting lunch stops. The rolling terrain
of this region of France is stunning but wearing when you have to pedal up
and down all of the small hills and as the day wore on I became more and
more aware of a growing pain in my left knee, I’ve never had a knee injury so
was a little confused. I didn’t think I had pushed too hard yesterday and
although the route was undulating there had been no serious climbing, it had
been cold yes but nothing compared to the winter rides I am used to in the
UK. The pain became so bad that I feared I might not be able to continue to
Istanbul, I didn’t ever tell Katie how bad the pain was nor that I was worried
about my being able to continue. Finally I worked it out; it had to be my
shoes/cleats. At the last minute I had decided to ride in my MTB shoes
rather than my road shoes but had not adjusted my seat height to a slightly
lower position to allow for the change in footwear and perhaps my left cleat
was slightly at the wrong angle. After making many stops to ease my knee I
decided to remove the cleat from my left shoe which left me balancing for
the next 100km on the small SPD pedal, awkward but the pain was easing.

Of course my right knee then came out in sympathy so I removed the cleat
from my right shoe too. Then came the daily rain storm. It was almost
impossible to ride balancing as I was on the pedals like this my feet would
slip off of the pedals every 50 yards or so. By the time we made it to a hotel
in Macon with our standard McDonalds meal I had resolved to change my
pedals to traditional flat pedals at the closest bike shop the next day. It
might not be stylish and would vastly reduce my power on the bike but at
least I would not be damaging my knee further.

Continued with Day 3 next month.

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