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.
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@graham d.m.
Ya. I got a relative or 2 like that....
Currently have Speedplay Zero's on both my bikes after switching from Shimano to Campy, many moons ago. To this day, I still miss my Dura Ace pedals.
@Skinnyphat no worries - next time I will wait until you correct your posts before commenting.
@Gianni
Meares was fantastic (and what has made both Pendleton and Meares so great has been their rivalry). The victory was made sweeter by the bookies over here who had her at $6 (or 5/1 US betting-speak) before the semis. It seems like the Brit dominance on the boards infected the minds of our Turf Accountants. In hindsight the easiest bet in a while.
Dont know whether you would have seen her celebrating with her family - but it was pretty cool. Meares' father is a coal miner from Newcastle (think Jon Voigt in Zoolander) and he was waving a home made banner with a picture of his daughter and the words, "Black Caviar on wheels". Black Caviar is the most famous racehorse around these parts right now because she is undefeated and just had a big win at Royal Ascot. To go to the trouble of making a banner that tells the world you bracket your daughter with a racehorse? Aussie Gold.
@Toby Esterhase
I've used teh last 3 generations of shimano pedals (2 Dura Ace, the latest Ultegra) and the dura ace pedals especially are magic.
The old SPD-R dura ace pedals were the best pedals I've ever used. Complete opposite of Speedplay - getting in and out of those things was murder on your knees and the retention was enormous. They were nearly 20 years old by the time I had to move them on and still spun like new.
@Toby Esterhase
Word. Tho these are what I miss. Loved the shoes, loved the platform. I know the current stuff is "better", but those shoes were sooooo comfortable for being so stiff.
When I got the new number 1, i also got my first set of carbon shoes, and decided to get a new clip-less system. The old Look Deltas were no longer high tech enough for the new ride.
I got talked into Shimano 105 instead of new Look Keo's. While I can tell the pedals are nice and are an improvement over the Delta's, I miss the feel of the Look's. And the engagement and disengagement is less automatic feeling. Maybe in a year or two I will switch over to speedplay.
But as a bigger guy, the sturdy platform and the even load distribution on the pedals is a must, and the speedplay's don't provide such. The people at the shop weren't a big fan either.
I really don't connect with these reverence articles. There's a lot of great cycling gear out there and the stuff I have locally available is never featured. Specialized, Giro, Zero RH+, Cliff, etc.
Maybe some anti-reverence articles need to come along. I'm sure we can agree on the shitty gear more than the good stuff.
Sorry, meant "switch over to Look", as in return to them.
@King Clydesdale I upgraded from LOOK Keo Sprints to Keo 2 Max. Actually the Sprints are on #2. The Keo 2 Max are not the cheapest but I prefer the wider platform and they were a fair bit cheaper than the carbon version and only 16 grams heavier.
@Gianni
hahaha, well just making sure you guys don't take off "hardman" points for not peeing while on the bike.... yep, kind of weird about the Belgians not embracing the speedplays. The only ones I can even find here are zeros. I have to buy parts in Germany.
yep, too much cow poop and mud I rekon.
@Skinnyphat
I'm not too sure on all the stuff about float and such, but the reason I went with SP's most recently is for the fast clip-in. I don't race, but I do commute everyday, and getting in and out of intersections and so forth was a big concern of mine. Fast forward a few months and I reckon this is the right system for the application, but wrong in all other regards. My base plates took an absolute beating, and a few times I lost screws out of them during some longer-ish rides. There is also the maintenance thing, though minimal as it may be, is still nothing like the one and done of the Shimano pedals. Another one of those love/hate relationships.