I’m old as dirt. My first two race bikes employed toe clips and toe straps and that set-up was bad. For many reasons it was bad and any retro-hipster who thinks otherwise is wrong. When Lemond and Hinault started racing on the white Look clipless pedals, everyone but Sean Kelly quickly switched. Talk about a quantum improvement, it was long overdue change. Look made improvements to their models, like the notion of float, and other manufactures jumped in. The new paradigm was a cleat on the pedal, like the original quill pedal system but with a spring loaded snap-in, twist-out pedal. Everyone was happy.
Everyone is happy until you have to replace a worn out plastic cleat. Did I walk a lot in my cycling shoes? Did all liquor stores have rough cement floors with giant moving sanding belts in front of the cash registers? I don’t remember that but I do remember replacing cleats too often and the duplication of cleat position was tedious. I could live with that, practice makes perfect but it was the creaking that drove me to madness. No amount of wax could stop the occasional creaking the cleat and pedals would make while climbing. Rule #65 was being violated before it was a Rule.
Wiser friends had already switched to Speedplay pedals. I was a little wary; they looked weird. One day into using them I understood: total frictionless float, two-sided entry, mindless pedal release. There is no cleat alignment issue as the pedal has no fixed position in the cleat. I was overcome with regret. Why had I waited so long? Why did I stick with creaking Look French pedals? Life is too short for such rubbish and I wasted too much of my cycling life with them. I’ve been using the X-series stainless steel pedals and the original pair was happily going on eighteen-plus years until I replaced the pedal needle bearings and bodies…I don’t want to talk about it. If you employ the good aftermarket cleat covers, and use a little white lightning teflon on the cleat spring bales, the cleats can last a few years. The pedal bodies have grease injector ports. Inject, wipe clean and that is the maintenance routine, easy and fun.
I’ve never used another model of Speedplay so I can’t speak to the advantage of limited float. When riding my right foot does a weird swing out toward the bottom of each stroke. To my mind that is a good thing, the float allows my leg to do that, without that maybe some extra knee wear would occur.
Frank and I have discussed the great pedal switch and his major obstacle to switching pedals is having to switch the whole n+1 stable over and that is not cheap. For Frank and VHM that stable may be five bikes. That’s a lot of pedals. Inertia. Commitment. It’s a big problem. Or one takes Marko’s approach: different shoes for each bike.
I have brand loyalties but if another cycling product is superior in form and function I hope I will see that and move on. Campagnolo gruppos and Chris King headsets are two brands on my bikes that I don’t see moving away from but I would ditch either of those before I would stop using Speedplay pedals. I’m that convinced.
This film is from Peloton’s website. It’s an interesting look at some American cycling manufacturing including Speedplay.
I know as well as any of you that I've been checked out lately, kind…
Peter Sagan has undergone quite the transformation over the years; starting as a brash and…
The Women's road race has to be my favorite one-day road race after Paris-Roubaix and…
Holy fuckballs. I've never been this late ever on a VSP. I mean, I've missed…
This week we are currently in is the most boring week of the year. After…
I have memories of my life before Cycling, but as the years wear slowly on…
View Comments
@sgt
Italy was the target for 2013 and I was charged with getting it together and I certainly had my eye on the Worlds in Toscana rather than Giro as the location. BUT, f'ing William and Alex, the Pave Lads, have set the bar soooo high as how much fun you can have in a week that we had to delay. So we doubled down on Belgium for now.
One of my cycling heros Eros Poli runs tours in Italy and I love to concoct one with him but I'm just not sure he is as amazing as the Pave lads. A quandary to be sure.
@Giles
Aliens also love gravel.
FWIW, one of the charms about the Velominati is that it is essentially a blog. A really well done blog for sure, but it is not a commercial site of any kind. It has original content (some really good writers here. I'm looking at you @frank). Plenty of humor, deep thoughts, contributions, and a general absence of COTHOs. In my country (USA) cycling is generally mostly a counter culture. 'murica is all about cars (do you know they actuulay claim driving in circle infront of drunks is a sport here? Really) and since bikes are claimed to interfere with cars, we are thus a fringe, hippie, neo-anachist evil enemy, that are essentially targets of the general population. IOW, just the kind of people I want to be associated.
I only discovered cycing and bike racing a few years ago. I don't know jack about it, except that riding a bike is fun, reading about it and its history and traditions entertaining, and sharing both of these endevours with others here a lot of fun. That someone here was misrepresenting or intentionally seeking a commercial gain by improper means never occurred to me. I think, honestly, that's a thought I have at just about every other site I ever visit on the interwebs. The last similar site I frequented is now closed: trustbut.blogspot.com and the TBV crew.
VLVV. All hail the Keepers.
@frank
No, don't go putting disclaimers about anything on the site. One of the other things I like about the site is that there is an underlying ethos that is free of bullshit, entitlement culture and holds no truck with the sort of cheap, X Factor/Britain/America's got talent celebrity worship that seeps to be evermore present in society. It's a place where people can generally speak their minds and discuss untrendy beliefs such as not wearing helmets without being castigated. Don't go all PC on us. If someone can't work out which bits of this site should be taken with a pinch of salt and which bits should be taken seriously then fuck 'em, they're not going to get any of it.
As for KT13 in Flanders, oh goody! I'm convinced that PR needs to be ridden twice, the first time just on understand the nature of the beast and the second to actually get to grips with it and ride it properly.
I actually want the Keepers to gather more sponsors and get more free kit and then review it, use it, reverence it, etc. My cycling budget won't allow me to try everything out there. It's like when you are among riding friends, its fun to hear about they're experiences with their kit, I don't mind if they gush, it's all for fun. I just like to hear what the Keepers think about stuff, I trust them and their judgements, and frankly I feel like these cats won't accept a second rate crap sponsor so if a company sponsors this community then it's kit is usually the real deal. Besides, it has benefitted all of us: see VSP prizes. Point is: thanks Keepers for all the hardwork, get as much free kit as possible (you earn it), and VLVV
@Steampunk
Agreed!
@roger
I almost started preaching to the choir about encouraging invasive advertising. I won't.
@frank Good reminder to "step up" and not "push off" with the cleats. Please step up. Please step up.
Time Sport website features Damiano Cunego on RXS Carbon pedals.
I happen to enjoy the Reverence articles. I don't see them as biased in a commercial sense, but they are not unbiased. However, that is not necessarily negative. There is nothing worng with extolling the virtues of a piece of equipment that you have used and are especially fond of.
I plan on going out tomorrow and getting a pair of Speedplay pedals to try out. Between the article and the video you have convinced me that I may have been overlooking these pedals.