**UPDATE**

Just wanted to let everyone know what happened at PT. PTist took a lot of time to move my legs in every direction possible to test flexibility, and also did some minor strength tests. She confirmed the physician's diagnosis of patella tendinitis, and said she felt nothing structurally wrong with the knee. She said the kneecap is floating a little bit, but that's probably due to the fluid build-up. Her ideas as to what is contributing to knee pain are:

1. My right quads are less flexible and slightly less strong than my left leg (where there isn't any knee pain).
2. My hamstrings are very flexible (I do stretch these quite a bit), but comparatively weak.
3. My calves are comparatively weak.
4. She does not think it's chondromalacia, as there does not seem to be abnormal imbalances between the strength of the three quad muscles.

Interestingly, my knee was more sore this morning, which I attribute to all the twisting and stretching she did of my leg yesterday. In short, she thinks strength and flexibility imbalances between different muscle groups on my right leg could be contributing to the pain. She doesn't think it's serious, as there is just a little bit of fluid, but has cautioned that I should not go hard until the pain has subsided. She has prescribed...

1. 2x daily stretching of the specific quad muscles that are tight, before and after riding/exercise.
2. Ice knee post ride ( I actually do this several x per day)
3. Continue with Naprosyn
4. PT 2x per week (stretching, ultrasound), for 3 weeks.
5. After three weeks of stretching to increase range of motion, she will then focus on several weeks of strengthening the specific muscles that could be contributing to this. She doesn't want to do this now as she thinks the 1 hour of cycling I do 4x per week is enough strength training for now, and she wants to focus on flexibility first.

Personally, the skeptic in me can't see how some extra stretching exercises are going to all of a sudden make the pain go away, but I will give it a try.

Oh, she saw the logic behind getting smaller cranks, but doesn't think at this point that's a step that will help in recovery and therapy. She wants to try the above first before making structural changes to bike. She also recommended I stick with floating cleats rather than fixed. Given all the positive feedback on Speedplay pedals and how they help relieve knee pain, I will need to look into those as I move forward. I'll still probably get smaller cranks once I do gear things back up.

Thanks for all the help and comments, even if you have any on this post.