Watch: How to service your Shimano SPD SL pedals | Road Bike Clipless Pedals

Shimano’s SPD-SL system has remained fundamentally unchanged for many years. Each new generation of pedals typically only receives minor improvements, often to slightly reduce weight.

This is why so many mistakes happen. "Clipless are designed to keep your foot engaged when pulling up even if you rotate your ankle a bit so as not to mistakenly unclip when sprinting, climbing a hill, or jumping a log," Compton explains. So how can you improve your release skills? "Make sure to push down on the pedal and rotate your ankle to unclip," Compton says. "If you pull up as you’re trying to unclip, the cleat won’t release and you’ll get stuck."

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.

Consumers can contact Trek at 800-373-4594 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. CT Monday through Friday, or online at www.trekbikes.com.

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And unless you do a lot of sprinting in rainstorms, you’ll sacrifice little to nothing in terms of performance with flat pedals. In fact they’ll probably improve your performance in the long run, given the fit and positioning issues so many riders seem to have with clipless. (If you need a pedal system with lots of float, ask yourself why you’re bothering with it in the first place.)

All positive so far, but about a week into testing, and thereafter, I started experiencing an odd squeaking noise. It doesn’t appear to affect the performance whatsoever but is just a tad irritating, and I was curious to see if I was the only one. After a month of use I handed them to road.cc editor (and regular Time pedal user) Tony to use for a couple of weeks and… there was no sound from them, just plenty of positive comments. Here’s exactly what Time’s distributor told me when I put it to them:

I have to use the SH56 multi release as my left foot won’t unclip without these. I was advised by a cycle shop that I would have problems with any other pedal systems – but haven’t tested this. What no one tells you is that the cleats wear out and make it hard to unclip. I have fallen over twice, so I keep an eye on this and as soon as they seem the slightest bit sticky swap them for new ones.

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We’re big fans of electronic shifting here at road.cc and we don’t know of many people who’ve used it regularly wanting to switch back to mechanical shifting, but it’s not without its downsides. Here are some of the little annoyances that we’ve experienced and heard about over the past few years.

Now I couldn’t use anything else. They are just pheneomenal compared to the various Looks I usually use. They need broken in first of all as the spring is super stiff, but once done then it only takes a little force to clip in. Actually finding the insert point is a few weeks of muscle memory (I stuck them on the indoor trainer first which sped this process up).

Albeit, many of us don’t commute in every day because we’re out and about doing journalism and need our cars in case of breaking news.