What to wear on a mountain bike ride: off-road cycle clothing guide | Bike Self Locking Pedals

With a couple of exceptions, such as Crank Bros and Time, many of the 2-bolt cleat designs (Wellgo, Ritchey, Boardman) are interchangable or, at least, the pedal design will accept the Shimano SPD cleat without too much problem. I have a couple of old sets of VP pedals that work fine with SPD cleats, but not the other way round.

This does seem to be an advantage with this type of cleat, if it’s in the right place most of the time you just set off pedalling and the clipping in happens automatically. No stomping required.

Starting at the end of August and until the winter weather, Grall was riding his Specialized Turbo Vado every day but one each week to and from work.

Also, at 470 grams they were the heaviest pedals. In use, neither the weight nor thickness affected my ride at all. I was mainly impressed with the smooth bearings, wide platform, and solid ride.

What shoes you should get to go with your pedals is a whole other article, but suitable shoes start from about £30. Check out the selections at Chain Reaction, Wiggle and Amazon.

But I admit to liking the casual style and all-day comfort they offer, and they’re nice for sightseeing, gravel riding, commuting and the occasional play on the mountain bike, too. The XC5’s long laces (on the smaller sizes) are my biggest complaint of these shoes and, frankly, a simple oversight on Shimano’s part. Assuming the XC5s tick the boxes of what you’re after, they’re cheap enough to allow room in the budget for new laces.

Shimano GR7 The GR7 has a stretch mesh ankle collar that offers additional debris protection. Claimed weight 349g in size 40. $113 USD.

Metro Phoenix was built for cars, with sprawling suburbs and dozens of miles of freeways looping through our cities. But as the Valley has added more public transportation options in the past few decades, we’ve mostly stayed in our vehicles.

Like you say, can take a little bit of wearing in to get rid of the stiffness, but get her on the turbo and at some point this will sound less like euphemism and more like shared experience

The carbon body is tough and durable, engagement system is very well made and easy to get in and out of as Time claims. They’re impressively light considering the surface area.

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).

Specialized cycling shoes usually use cleats on the bottom of the shoes, and a matching spring-loaded clip on the pedal. SPD cleats are the most common type you’re likely to see in classes. (Pro tip: these are called “clipless” pedals, even though you have to clip in, because clips, aka toe clips, are something else entirely.)