Finds from the Grind - If you ride on Speedplay pedals, change your shims.

While changing my worn out left cleat, I decided to read the instructions. Mind you, I haven't done that in ten years, but I thought, "Hey, maybe there's something in there that would explain why the balls of my feet hurt after about 2 hours of riding." My old shoes never gave me this pain, but I only owned one pair of shoes for about 9 years.

I read the compatibility warning about how the factory default shims might need to be changed for your particular brand, so I looked up what Speedplay had to say about Shimano on the included yellow piece of paper. Huh. 2013 pedal cleats need to use the included thicker shims to match the curvature of the shoe instead of the factory installed ones. Oh. I only got new shoes last year, so I never had to worry about this before. I'll find out this week if that solves pain problem, which I'm pretty confident of, since that pain felt like the soles were just flexing too much. Pfft. The things you find out when your read the manual.