The best flat shoes and clipless shoes for mountain bikers | Road Bike Clipless Pedals

Although it gives both Shimano and Look’s higher-end pedals a run for their money in terms of price, the Xpro 10 is actually the least expensive of Time’s three Xpro pedals. While the Xpro 10 has a hollow steel axle and steel bearings, the Xpro 12 (£259.99) has a solid titanium axle with steel bearings and is lighter at a claimed 94g per pedal. The top-end Xpro 15 is a whopping £399.99, weighing just 87g per pedal (claimed) with CeramicSpeed bearings and a hollow titanium axle. Essentially, all three are identical in shape and you get the new carbon fairing on the Xpro 10s, so unless you’re really fussy about weight and really want ceramic bearings, they’re probably the best to go for.

The BC-born, Chromag Surface Ti hardtail is a unique beast. The Surface sits solidly in the all-mountain hardtail category, designed for a 150mm fork and 29×2.4” or 27.5×2.8” tires. Leaning into a 66° head tube and 75° seat tube angle, the bike is clearly capable of dropping your friends downhill and keeping pace on the climbs. With external cable routing and an external BSA bottom-bracket, this is a frame to keep most home mechanics riding more than tinkering. The frame is constructed from custom-drawn Ti tubes, resulting in a dialed ride quality on rocky BC singletrack.

Look pioneered clipless pedals back in the Eighties, and they’ve maintained a huge presence in the market ever since.

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.

Flats on the DH bike, enduro, xc and cross bike, clips on the road bike and that’s only because you look daft in fivetens and lycra.

In case you’re wondering why they’re called clipless pedals, it’s because pedals used to have metal cages, called toe clips, and leather straps to hold the shoe in place. Racing shoes had cleats that were slotted to fit the cage of the pedal. To get out, you had to loosen the strap. Falling over at traffic lights behind a busload of schoolkids was not unknown.

Dan Herrigstad pauses before riding his e-bike across the Interstate 5 Bridge en route to the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center near the Oregon Health and Science University campus. 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();

I used Shimano SPD 520 clipless for years, but the hot spots on the ball of your foot they can create permanently damaged the nerves in my feet, causing a complete loss of feeling.  I switched to 100 x 100 mm platform pedals and I now vastly prefer them  for urban riding.  Besides all the advantages of platfroms and avoiding hot spots and nerve damage, there is no more clipity-clop walking around in cafes and shops or on the train or the ferry.  I can now ride in my Converse’s if I want to.  

Speedplay pedals are always touted as being super light, but the cleat on the shoe looks like it weighs a lot more than a simple plastic look type cleat. Out of interest what is the total system weight including cleats for the lightest from each brand?

For mountain bikers, Shimano pedals also represent a solid investment. In our opinion, they provide basically the gold standard compromise of weight, durability and performance — and typically for Shimano can be found at very reasonable prices.

This was on a cold day and he said he should have worn gloves and earmuffs, and brought tissues. And then there was one other problem.

Actually, I needn’t have worried. The trails soon venture into the woods proper, and traction issues largely disappear. All that chalk is hidden under layer upon layer of leaf mulch, and as lacking in traction as it is, it’s much more of a known quantity for my delicate Northern sensibilities – and it’s no match for the tyres. It’s gratifying to be able to lean the bike over into corners and accelerate out the other side without worrying (too much). The trails are everything I’d imagined them to be – a happy flowing middle ground where there’s fun to be had riding them gently, and fun to be had riding them hard. Short, flattering climbs lead onto flowy, bermy descents. A short, steep chute gives a few of us pause, before we decide that our collective confidence is up to the task, and we ride it anyway. And, once again, grip was there in unexpected but welcome profusion.