An even better correlation

 A few days ago I wrote about how I think there might be a correlation between my knee hurting and the amount of sitting I do on the weekends. There are definitely days when I sit more but there are also days when I sit more at school and my knee doesn't hurt. Then last Monday, as I was getting ready for school, I put my school shoes on and stood up. The first thing I thought was these feel so different than the shoes I wear on the weekend. And my knee hurt a little. Then as I walked the pain started to recede. Hmmmm...I wore those shoes all week and seriously had next to zero knee pain. Even those days when I did Supernatural at night. Zero knee pain. Friday I had a staff meeting at school so I ended up wearing my school shoes and did not have a problem even though I literally sat for almost 3 straight hours. Whenever I initially stand up the back of the knee is a little stiff, but recently it has been clearing in just a few steps. So that got me to thinking, could it not be the sitting but the shoes I'm wearing? So yesterday I did an experiment. I got up, got dressed and put the shoes I normally wear on the weekends on. Within minutes my knee was starting to hurt. I switched out to another pair of shoes that are more like my work shoes and boom, all day, no pain. So here's what I deduced from this experiment: my weekend shoes are running shoes and they have some cushion on the bottoms. For whatever reason, the cushioning is not flat and probably compressed more on one side than the other. This results in my foot not sitting flat and therefore putting strain on my knee. So even though my weekend shoes are zero drop, or close to it, they have some cushioning that got compressed and is now causing me to tilt slightly and therefore putting pressure on my knee. Now this makes a whole lot of sense because this knee pain started the very first time I wore these shoes. These were my "I'm going to start running again" shoes and the first day I took them out for a run this pain started. And so there you have it, it took me 4 months to figure it out, but I did. I now need to get some true zero drop shoes to wear on the weekends and I'm even looking at some Birkenstocks for sandals this summer. So wish me luck on the search.