Adjust the cleats.

There is normally enough travel in the fitting of the cleats to the shoes to allow you to correctly position the alignment. A small twist in the cleat direction (a few degrees) results in a big change in the overall direction of the shoe, and therefore your toe.

Cleats are also usually reversible from left to right shoe, and the net result of doing this is that you can gain or lose 1 cm in and out... er, hard to explain, but the holes for cleat attachment are not set dead evenly, they are set to one side of the cleat... so when you have a cleat on the left shoe the shoe center is closer to the crank, and put the same cleat on the right shoe and the shoe center is further from the crank. Thus you are able to adjust the alignment of your foot left to right so that you aren't having to twist your foot inwards (or outwards) on any part of the stroke.

The key things with cleat alignment:

• Ensure the cleat is fitted so that the ball of your foot is aligned with the crank hole (there's probably a name for that which I don't know).
• Ensure that there is no twist in your foot throughout the stroke.
• Ensure that your knee is a hinge and not a ball socket.

The first two you can get by playing around, the last one is much harder. But if you can set up your bike on some rollers or a power trainer, then jump on board and have someone shine a very thin narrow light straight down your knee... start pedalling, and that light should *not* be moving left to right... it should stay dead straight on your knee throughout the pedal stroke.

If you do find that you're twisting slightly and causing the light to move side to side, then you can use shims between the cleat and shoe to correct this... you want to shim at an angle so that the twist is eradicated... let me find you a picture of this.... actually scrap that, there's a better explanation over here: http://www.cyclefit.co.uk/lewedge.htm