The best flat shoes and clipless shoes for mountain bikers | Bike Self Locking Pedals

Boehm enjoyed her carless commute so much she ended up buying an unlimited light-rail card so she could ride it to work a few times a week.

I’ve 2 bikes with Di2, it’s faultless and you dontd need to buy brand new, most of my hardware is 2nd hand, and has been perfect.

We won’t touch on these shoes too much, suffice to say they are a ‘clip in’ shoe with a three bolt mount to fit road style cleats to. They are usually very stiff to offer good power transfer, they are hard to walk in and wouldn’t be used on a mountain or gravel bike. For more on road shoes, including the best ones to buy, head over to road.cc here and read their buyer’s guide to road shoes.

“I’ve been toying with the idea of switching to Time, but still currently prefer Shimano. Time offer smoother float and a lower weight. And the cheap Time pedals are pretty damned good. But I’m not switching until I know the bearings are sufficiently durable.”

The HT X2 pedals fall into the ‘snappy and secure’ category, which won’t work for everyone – especially those new to clip-in pedals. However, it’s their combination of platform shape, cleat options, adjustability, and the robust clip mechanism that saw the X2s take top honours here.

None of this is to say that I’m above putting on unsophisticated music in order to psyche myself up for a ride; in fact, I was listening to Carcass while wrangling myself into a pair of bib shorts as recently as two weeks ago. And while you may now not be able to unsee that horrendous image, at least I had the decency to do it in the privacy of my own home.

Shimano’s SPD-SL system is the clear favourite amongst our team, with US tech editor James Huang, CyclingTips founder Wade Wallace, roving reporter Dave Everett, Australia senior editor Matt de Neef, US editor-in-chief Neal Rogers, and myself all going this route.

The Shimano ME7 and Specialized 2FO shoes are a good examples of enduro or all mountain shoes, they’ve got chunky soles for walking in, a flatter sole profile for gripping pedals and are comfortable and rugged enough to be worn on big days out in the hills whilst still being stiff enough for an enduro race.

"I think many of us have seen those kids that were started on clipless pedals too young," said Dan Maier, QBP’s BMX product manager. "I don’t see it as much anymore but have seen more than a few younger racers fall at the track and still be completely stuck to their bikes. They were either not strong enough to unclip or their pedals were way too tight. Both are safety issues."

I’ve got the M324 pedals mentioned above on my pub bike. They are great for what they are, but you do have to watch it if you’re clipped in, as it’s very easy to catch the cage on the floor when cornering.

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Dan Bendiksen waits at a stoplight in downtown Vancouver on his e-bike during his commute to work. Nathan Howard/The Columbian var objLink = new myC_Remote.BuyLink(); objLink.LinkContent = "<span" class="btn btn-warning btn-xs pull-right btn-buyphoto">Buy this photo"; objLink.IsAboveImage = false; objLink.LinkTarget = "_blank"; objLink.Render();