darkside: recommend me some new pedals

I've always used mtbbike spds on my roadbikes but having just bought a new road bike – i'll mention it when it arrives and show some piccies – i wanna try some "real" roadie pedals.

I'm using Look Keo's which are great but I'm having trouble with my dodgy right knee. Currently use the grey cleat that offers 4 degrees float supposedly. Still feel that my leg isn't "free" though. Gonna try some red cleats which have 9 degrees and see if there is an improvement. Otherwise it's a swap to the MTB shoes and SPDs, which don't cause a problem. It may not be the pedals at all. I've gone from riding a SS mtb 4 or 5 days a week for around an hour a day to 2 road rides per week with a social group but we generally do from 60 to 80 miles each day. So it could be the BIG jump in mileage and time on the bike.

I wish I'd spent the extra £20 (which I could easily have afforded at the time but not now) and had Speedplay Zeros. But then I didn't know I'd have any troubles.

Having said that I think the Keos are good, clip in well and out easily and hold foot steady with good support. I wear Spesh Pro shoes which are ace.

Canfield Crampons

I've just bought some Look Keo 2 Max

Love them to bits-easy to clip in and out. Better than my Ultegra 6620 as I couldn't unclip.

Fudges cycles do them for £73 posted.

I'd second Speedplay Zero's. I have a torn medial meniscus and in combination with cleat wedges the very free, but adjustable float, think foot on an ice cube, but with a stable platform helped a great deal to reduce the rotational forces on my knee. It took 3-4 rides to get used to them because the float is non-centred and low friction. Also reduced hip discomfort for me.

But I'd emphasise that I had to sort out the sideways movement caused by pronation with wedges as well otherwise my heel would have just moved around even more during the pedal stroke

Walking on them is a no-no, so the covers are needed and set up can be tricky. I also use spesh shoes.

I have the outland Look Keo style with the Red Cleats, great pedals and nice and cheap HERE

I also use Spesh shoes, but the BG comps with carbon soles, very comfortable and stable.

IMHO noticeably much more stable that MTB SPD's and better power transfer

* ahem cough [/url]*

Go for Time, knee friendly, cleats last ages, light, cheap for the basic ones, what more do you want ?

Used and raced with KEO's for years without an issue. As for those Outland pedals, I've heard nothing but bad things..

Keos or Shimano spdSLs, either is good.
BTW, I wish I could remember the links, but don't assume that more float is always better, there's been a few recent studies that suggest that's a bit of a myth.

Have always used Look pedals with very few problems however if I was starting from scratch again I would definatly go for speedplay zeros. Why? low weight, easy double sided entry, low stack height and great float adjustment.

Float definitely isn't always better, that 's why I pointed out that you need to solve any other issues. But it worked for me in the end. Can get expensive finding the right set up. I was happy with spds for years until a knee injury.

Time.
See above. The cleats last for years, a bit like the pedals.

Got the Look Keos but if I was doing it again would go for the Shimanos. The Look cleats wear very quickly

Most roadie pedals are shit to be honest. Not so much the pedals which are much of a muchness but the cleats.

Try walking around in them buggers and you'll wish you had shoes with spd cleats on before long. Plus plenty of roadie cleats(looks are perfect examples), wear out massively quickly if you walk around on concrete/tarmac.

Plus, some roadies pedals (again, sorry to pick on looks again), are a real pain to clip in quickly. SPD's you just stamp on the pedal and you're in, Looks you have to push the pedal round to get them the right way round.

Personally I think SPD's would have become the ipso facto bike pedal standard across all bikes many years ago if roadies weren't such appalling kit snobs.

woaaah, dude!, there is no depths of wrongness that samuri, isn't capable of diving deeper to. 😯

Not as far as I'm aware.

C'mon, I'd be the first one to recommend that nervous new roadies stick to SPDs.
But,for long distances there's no comparison when it comes to efficiency.

Which alternatives are we talking about? Looks? I'll conceed that say, Time's are better but I really do think looks are a bit crap. (If you'd not gathered). My son rides at the track every week so he's very used to Looks but as soon as we went out for a road ride and he had to clip in without the benefit of a rail to lean on, he really struggled.

Plus the cleats looked terrible after only a few minutes walking around at a cafe.

The only advantage of roadie pedals as far as I can see is they they offer a much wider platform thus presumably spreading the weight around a bit more but that's nothing a decent shoe shouldn't already accomplish.

samuri – Member
My son rides at the track every week so he's very used to Looks but as soon as we went out for a road ride and he had to clip in without the benefit of a rail to lean on, he really struggled.

WTF?

You'll have to expand on your WTF. That he struggled? You have to kick the pedal round to clip in, while moving, in traffic. Obviously easy for you. You're right, he's a poor substitute for a human being. I should disown him.

surely once you're in roadie pedals the first time you don't need to get in them again during the ride. Its not like MTB, stopping every so often for gates and stuff is it? I always either trackstand or find something to hold onto at traffic lights. sorted!

by the way Look Keos for me..

I use Crank Bros Quattros on my road bike.

I use their mtb pedals and the Quattors replicate the float and feel but do feel more 'stable'. The cleats are std CB ones recessed into a holder so walking's not too bad for short distances.

Look Keo for me, great pedal, was tempted by a pair of speedplays, can't go wrong with either I'd say.

Which alternatives are we talking about? Looks? I'll conceed that say, Time's are better but I really do think looks are a bit crap. (If you'd not gathered). My son rides at the track every week so he's very used to Looks but as soon as we went out for a road ride and he had to clip in without the benefit of a rail to lean on, he really struggled.

Plus the cleats looked terrible after only a few minutes walking around at a cafe.

The only advantage of roadie pedals as far as I can see is they they offer a much wider platform thus presumably spreading the weight around a bit more but that's nothing a decent shoe shouldn't already accomplish.

WTF +1 Your son needs to learn to track stand!!!!!!

I still don't get it. Can I just make sure I've got this straight?

You and druidh are such riding gods, that you simply cannot understand why a child might struggle with a less than well designed pedal when he has never used one before out on the road in amongst traffic?

Is that right?

I gave up on Look years ago and went Time, wild horses couldnt drag me back to them now, Look cleats are squeaky short lived bits of plastic, the build quality was also very shonky, bearings lasted a year on average when i was riding lots

Yes, road pedals are harder to clip into but like certain things in mountain biking it becomes second nature after a while, it just happens without thinking about it.

And all this BS about walking not being easy, er, its a road bike, how far do you need to walk, bike-cafe-cafe-bike, that should be the end of it !

tragically – some people use bikes for transport too – it's tricky to nip into town for soemthign on a bike you can only wear shoes that need special fittings to stop you lookign like Bambi on ice if you walk on a shiney floor.

Most roadie pedals are shit to be honest. Not so much the pedals which are much of a muchness but the cleats.

Try walking around in them buggers and you'll wish you had shoes with spd cleats on before long

Why would you want to walk around in them?

Typical road ride: put shoes on, wheel bike outside, ride XX miles, get home, take shoes off.

Not for me. Ride, get off, buy ticket, climb up 30 steps over railway bridge, stand on platform. Get on train. get off train. Climb 25 steps to shiny concourse, wheel bike outside, get on, ride off.

Based on what I've read here, I'll get some decent road shoes but stick with my time SPDs (I have dodgy knees too). I am going to do some longer rides (signed up for 100m Dartmoor in June – gulp) but more than 75% of my road riding is commuting, so SPDs for me it seems.

I agree spds would be much more sensible for a commute.

N.b. a lot of (most?) road shoes don't have drillings for standard spd cleats, and the soles are pretty flat, so they'll still be a bugger to walk in.

This was interesting from this thread

IIRC the faster the cadence the less you pull up.

eg.
Stood up sprinting you pull up quite a bit. Which is where SPD's win.

Sat down your somehwere in between, your just about unweighting your leg, SPD's are of some but marginal benifit here.

Spinning at 120rpm+ most subjects were still pushing down well into the upstroke (i.e. past BDC), the downward force on the pedal was greater than what youd expect from just accelerating the weight of the leg.

So as most of you roadies sit down & spin fast, why not try a flat pedal that gets your foot closer to the axis of the axle, like the crampons (8mm)

Do any of the roadie pedals get your foot as low down as that?

speedplay zeros. Why? low weight

Yeah, lightest pedal – biggest cleat! 😉

wwaswas – 100% agree, but we dont really know what he wants to do so he has all options covered now !

ooo000ooo, Bont shoes are designed to have as thin a sole as possible (3mm i think) for that very reason. Interestingly, Speedplay pedals (which are supposed to be the shiz ergonomically) have a high stack height relative to most other road pedals.

I put MTB SPD's on my road bike to ride Flanders (so that I could actually walk if I needed to on the cobbles) and now I use them all the time on the road except for time trialling. Can't see the point in walking around like I just sh@t myself when I get off the bike !

lol

I see finbar, I suppose that probably gets the base of your bare foot closer than crampons + fivetens