Pain on bottom foot when freewheeling for a time in a gravel descent One of my favorite touring routs is on a rural route. It is 15 km* long, I take about an hour to complete it since a part of the first half is sandy and I need to dismount to traverse it.
At the 10 km mark there is a steady descent which is mostly between gravel and crushed stone. I don't pedal and slightly press the brakes so that I keep a safe speed between 20~30 km/h. It takes 3 min until the terrain is level again.
The thing is: After the 1st minute I start to feel some discomfort in my left foot, which is the one corresponding to the lowest pedal — for some reason I have better balance if my left foot is in the down position when coasting, and even though I want to exchange the position, I don't want to relinquish balance. After the 2nd minute the discomfort gradually becomes a light pain, and when the descent is over I am glad I can pedal again, which causes the light pain to quickly go away.
Is that discomfort and pain I experience on the down foot something expected or known between cyclists?
As far as I know I am healthy and otherwise experience no trouble when cycling, though I am no &quot;serious&quot; rider either, rather lazy on maintenance (e.g. no clipping pedals or special clothes, never wash my bicycle, no odometer or any GPS whatsoever, ...). I wonder if it is because of the constantly shaking on the gravel descent and the left feet having to absorb it or something else.
Further info: My saddle height is appropriately set, namely knee is only slightly flexed when my feet is in the down position. The air temperature is totally comfortable (25 °C). Shoes are definitely not tight. If I can give any more useful information, I'll be glad to edit the question.
*Time, distance and speed are all to my best estimate, they are not totally accurate.
It's generally a good idea to change position regularly (at least slightly) during any ride. If you get used to just one position, your body learns to keep that position no matter what, and it'll do that by stiffening up if the bumpy descent tries to shake you out of it. But stiffening is the worst thing you can do in such a situation: it'll cause the stresses to concentrate right into the most exposed joints and muscle sections, instead of being able to harmlessly distribute it over the whole legs. What's more, having the left foot always down is a recipe for pedal strikes in left turns. A pedal strike at high speed can lead to a very nasty crash. So definitely get rid of the left foot down habit.
One easy way to train flexibility is to slowly back-pedal (on the straights; in corners, always keep both pedals level or outer foot down). But I wouldn't focus only on the pedals – the whole body position influences the forces on hands and feet.
It helps a lot for body flexibility to have the saddle in a really low position on descents. A dropper post is super useful for this reason (now standard on most mountain bikes). With a low saddle, you can stand up without needing to stretch too high, move your body weight far over the rear wheel when it gets steep, balance the bike side to side underneath you etc.. And when sitting down, neither leg will be stretched at all, so the knees have plenty of freedom to move.
Of course, MTB suspension also does a lot to make rough descents more comfortable, but it really isn't needed for gravel. It does make sense to use relatively wide tyres and low pressure though, and some bikes a more compliant than others. Steel or carbon fibre tend to be better than aluminium in this regard.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, in my experience it also helps to clip in, because then the legs can relax even more without risking to slip off the pedals. So clipless pedals &amp; shoes (I recommend Shimano SPD) are perhaps a good investment, if not a dropper post and/or suspension fork.