Ask Pinkbike: Shock Tuning, Flat Pedals, Ride Tracking & More | Spd Pedals

Road touring was followed by mountain biking and a career racing in the mud that was as brief as it was unsuccessful.

“We buy these bikes (and) we end up owning these bikes,” Fischer said. “It’s not like they’re on loan to us until we can sell them.

These are indeed awesome: I still use 520 pedals with the SH56 cleats for my commute; I don’t think they can be beaten for stop-start over mixed terrain.

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Durability has been really good. The shoes are reinforced in the key places to avoid the upper getting damaged when walking up an unrideable track or smashing your toe into an unseen rock. The rubber tread is showing little sign of wear and tear despite a reasonable amount of hike-a-bike and cyclocross racing, which is a good thing as it’s not replaceable.

One of the biggest motivations for sticking with a traditional three-bolt road pedal system is the larger contact surface area it provides. Under harder pedaling efforts — and especially on longer rides — this helps distribute the load over a greater portion of the shoe (and thus, your foot) for greater comfort as the kilometers tick away.

That said, Di2 is customisable. You could reconfigure the system and make the button that’s hidden at the top of each hood perform upshifts, for example, to sidestep any problem.

Disagree with the Speedplay comments above. I moved to them this year and yes I hated them for a few weeks and was considering eBaying them.

Right now though, you’re spoilt for choice and there will be a flat pedal to suit both your feet and your pockets. So much of what we’re told and sold in bikes is about extremes, and it’s easy to take that into assuming you need the stickiest shoes combined with the gnarliest pedals. You might, but you probably don’t.

Even better, the cartridge-style axle assembly is well sealed and very easy to service, with proper steel ball bearings throughout instead of plastic bushings that will wear out over time. The forged aluminum bodies have proven impressively tough, too. Whereas some carbon fiber or plastic pedal bodies would explode on even moderate impacts, these A600s have shrugged off a number of direct rock strikes.

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That said – definitely not a beginnner setup. Tightening the cleat screws even .5nm too much and you can compress part of the housing enough to give you issues with the spring. Breaking in the spring must be a hell of a time for a light rider, and if the missus moves on to them (I have bought her some, but after realising the initial learning curve she lost interest), I’ll have to break the spring in for her. Also actually finding the pedal isn’t just step down and go – you have a few cm wide circle under you foot that you need to mount so like Keo’s etc, you still need to develop muscle memory.