Review: Pedaling Innovations Catalyst Pedals | Road Bike Clipless Pedals

However, nothing compared to my “holy … cow” experience on one of the Specialized e-bikes from Fischer’s collection.

Many flat pedals use commonly available steel M4 socket caps or grub screws, which makes replacing pins cheap and easy. Some companies are pushing at the limits of pin design though, tweaking them to maximise grip, lower weight, or sometimes to be less aggressive.

“I started with (Shimano) 105s that came with my first roadie. When I built a custom bike up for the first time, the Look Keo Blade had just been launched and looked pretty attractive, so I went with the Look Blade Carbon Cromo. I haven’t looked back. The biggest positive changes over Shimano are the solid, loud, and confidence-inspiring clip-in feel and sound. No second guessing if you’ve clipped in or not. My current set has about 14,000km and are still going strong without a single service or bearing replacement.”

Ride Concepts Traverse The Traverse takes all the goods from the Skyline and adds an ankle strap for on-the-go adjustment. $160

Off road: still have a soft spot for Time Atacs, use ‘em for CX and XC (with the carbon soled disco slippers). Otherwise Shimano SPDs can be found cheap, work reliably and go on forever.

The Hellcats work fine, even with Eggbeater pedals. However, they feel even better with a clipless pedal with a bit more platform. photo: Leah Barber

The pedal body is machined from one piece of 6061-T6 aluminium billet. Time reckons that makes it seriously durable on the trail. It’s certainly beautifully finished.

Would be great to see size ranges listed too. I wear 14EE so bike shoes are always a pain (literally).

nxgater: Yes, it’s important to look after one’s knees. Perfect set up with clipless pedals seems crucial for avoiding problems in such an important part of the body, presumably lots of people manage that though.

Can you handle that? No-one here is saying Surly sucks and didn’t know how to use Speedplays. So don’t take offence. We’re not saying we’re more skilled than you, or more technical than you, or better riders than you. We just got on with them, you didn’t.

The exception — and a very good choice for SPD beginners — is Shimano’s PD-M324 combination pedals. These have a flat platform on one side and an SPD mechanism on the other, and you get multi-release cleats in the box.

Running out of battery power is a possibility if you have electronic shifting although, to be honest, you’ll have only yourself to blame! Like falling off at the traffic lights the first time you use clipless pedals, it’s the sort of thing you’ll do once and then make sure you never repeat.