This is more of a “Freddy vs Jason” kind of discussion. If you have to ask who wins, you’ve missed the point.
I’ve been in love with riding my bike my whole life. Not cycling; riding my bike. There is a difference. I didn’t understand this until a few weeks ago.
It all started back when I was eight years old and I learned to ride a two-wheeled bicycle for the first time. It was to my eight-year-old-world, the equivalent of learning to fly. Sounds sappy because it was.
I lived to ride my bike, it’s all I wanted to do and I did it whenever I had the chance. As I got older the bike became more than a toy. It earned me money delivering papers, it was my therapist when I needed to get away and think, it was my freedom.
I raced mountain bikes during my teenage years. This was the nineties and at the time a lot of people were switching over to clipless pedals. I didn’t understand this for cross-country mountain biking. There were too many situations where I wouldn’t want to be clipped in. Even using toe-clips, I would pull my foot out and place it on the non-clip side of the pedals, knowing I might have to bail.
The problem with clipless pedals wasn’t the pedals or the fact that that you were clipped in. Toe-clips were essentially the same thing as far as being connected goes. The problem as I saw it was the shoes. This in my opinion is the worse part of riding clipless.
Now for a matter of clarity, I’m talking about SPD mountain specific pedals which are double sided and known to be easier to clip in and out of compared to their road-bike SL counterparts. The mountain bike shoes as a result of being designed for off road use are much easier to walk in and have treads to help with grip and traction when off the bike.
Here is my problem with them. Most athletes perform on the balls of their feet. This is the part of the foot that has the most balance and agility. When jumping off, well anything, I don’t land on my toes or my heels. I land on the balls of my feet. This is more critical when jumping off onto uneven or rocky terrain. Anyone familiar with clipless pedals and the shoes required to use them knows that the ball of the foot is where the cleat is located. This is not ideal for landing on rocky or uneven terrain. There isn’t much traction with metal on rock and between the cleat, and the plastic plate it screws into, there isn’t any give in this part of the shoe either.
Due to this I was quite happy to stay with my toe-clips. At least for mountain biking and off road riding.
For as much as I loved riding my bike, I fell out of riding for a few years while in collage. I returned to the bike a few years after graduation when my life and job settled down.
At the time, I needed a bike not just for fun, but also commuting. I went with a cyclocross bike. Living in the city and not having much in the way of woods or mountains, the cross bike was beefy enough to handle commuting and the occasional off-road-lite of the local park.
When I bought the bike I went with clipless pedals, eggbeaters to be exact. I was an adult after all and riding primarily on the road, I figured why not.
That was seventeen years ago and I’ve been riding clipless ever since.
I had the same falls that everyone has….stopped at a busy intersection during rush hour tip-over. The unclip right foot, but lean left oops. As well as the, “I forgot how to shift and now I’m stuck in way too high of a gear and slowly rolling backwards train wreck”. Okay, that last one might just be me.
The point is I took my lumps and stuck with it for nearly two decades. During which I rode clipless for commuting, cross racing, training, fitness, gravel riding, everything. I even had to buy to a pair of clipless shoes on vacation when I brought everything I needed to ride, except my shoes. That was an expensive mistake.
During all that time even though I never really thought about it, I didn’t really like clipless. I did it because that’s what you do when you are a “serious” cyclist and I was a serious cyclist. I mean, doesn’t that list of riding types I did for nearly two decades prove it?
At best I found riding clipless an annoying necessity like wearing a cup shoved in jock strap for baseball.
I also think, and this could just be me, but putting on special shoes to do something specific changed my mindset. Putting on the shoes meant I was about to be serious and possibly about to start hurting myself by pushing my limits. I think on some level, that took a little bit of the fun out of riding my bike.
As time went by, I, like most cyclists, accumulated bikes. And when the kids came along and were old enough to ride, one of those bikes would get flat pedals put on it so that I could just grab it and go with them. During these family rides I was more concerned about them then I was about my own riding. Instead of jumping off due to a technical section, I was jumping off to help them.
But something happened that even I didn’t notice. My wife said to me one afternoon while on a short family ride that I was weaving and cutting back and forth, riding circles around the rest of the family, shifting my feet, and bouncing (bunny-hopping) with excitement. She said when ever she saw me ride I never did that. IT was always straight lines, head down, focused. Working.
Of course she thought this was a result of being with the family, and maybe to an extent it was, but I think what was happening was that I was riding my bike like I did as a kid. Like how I did in those years when I raced mountain bikes for fun. When I wasn’t paying attention to power meters or cadence.
For the last few years my feet have started to hurt when riding for long periods. I’ve been properly fitted and even have had my cleats set up through a fitting. It seems that I need a wider shoe. My feet are freezing to point of numbness in the winter for which I’ve purchased numerous booties and shoe covers over the years with mixed results.
Finally, I had had enough and put on flat pedals with wider, warmer, and cheaper regular shoes. I’m riding more and smiling more. I guess I’m not a serious cyclist after all.
Flats vs Clipless isn’t a which one is better argument. Most of what I’ve read by experts is that there is with clipless a marginal advantage at best, at least that can be measured. Most of the difference is subjective, it’s a mindset. I think you either have that mindset or you don’t.
If you worry about watts and rpm’s, if you paid hundreds of dollars more for a bike part because it weighed less than a cheaper one. You should be riding clipless. If you know where a power meter is located on a bike even though you don’t have one, you should be riding clipless.
However, if you throw one leg over the side of the bike and coast for twenty feet or more with both legs on the same side of the bike while coming to a stop, or if the pants that you ride in are loose enough to roll up the drive side pant leg so you don’t get grease on it, you should probably try flat pedals.
