Clipless pedals and knees!!!

[markwill]

A buddy of mine lent me a pair of SPD shoes today, which I can use with my one-sided SPD pedals on my Giant OCR1. Wow - what a difference!!!! The extra power I got going up hills was WAY more than I anticipated - I was positively cruising up a rather long hill. I got my time down from 59:45 on a 4 mile pretty hill ride to 58:15 (which includes a long wait at a traffic light). I was blown away by the improvement. And, yes, I went through my initiation by falling off on one of my first attempts, but thankfully this was in my driveway so I didn't look too foolish Sadly, the fall gashed my Integra right hand brake/shifter and there may be some damage but the ride didn't expose this.

Anyway, to my question. I must confess that I did struggle a little with getting the shoes engaged and out as I rode. However, I think I'll get used to this over time. What worries me is that my left foot (the left one in particular) seemed to be pointing in to a greater extent than I when had the shoe engaged, more so than without clipless pedals. Although the pain wasn't significant, I did have some discomfort in my left knee from the apparently unnatural angle for my foot.

Is this normal with clipless or should I be adjusting so that the shoes is angled as they would without clipless pedals?

Thanks.

Mark

 

[e_guevara]

You should find the right alignment of your cleats with respect to your foot. Here's a similar problem from bicycling.com:

http://www.bicycling.com/qanda/0,3257,s1-981,00.html?category_id=365&article_type_id='qa'

HTH

Cheers!

e_guevara

 

[MeesterBond]

A buddy of mine lent me a pair of SPD shoes today, which I can use with my one-sided SPD pedals on my Giant OCR1. Wow - what a difference!!!! The extra power I got going up hills was WAY more than I anticipated - I was positively cruising up a rather long hill. I got my time down from 59:45 on a 4 mile pretty hill ride to 58:15 (which includes a long wait at a traffic light). I was blown away by the improvement. And, yes, I went through my initiation by falling off on one of my first attempts, but thankfully this was in my driveway so I didn't look too foolish Sadly, the fall gashed my Integra right hand brake/shifter and there may be some damage but the ride didn't expose this.

Anyway, to my question. I must confess that I did struggle a little with getting the shoes engaged and out as I rode. However, I think I'll get used to this over time. What worries me is that my left foot (the left one in particular) seemed to be pointing in to a greater extent than I when had the shoe engaged, more so than without clipless pedals. Although the pain wasn't significant, I did have some discomfort in my left knee from the apparently unnatural angle for my foot.

Is this normal with clipless or should I be adjusting so that the shoes is angled as they would without clipless pedals?

Thanks.

Mark

It's not natural for your knees to hurt, but quite common...

You've got to adjust the cleat position so that it locks your foot into a position that you can pedal comfortably in. One way is to sit on a table or similar so that your feet dangle, and then adjust the cleats so that they point forward when your feet are relaxed.

Personally, I find that I need a pedal system with loads of float in it to ride comfortably so I've ditched the SPDs and gone over to Crank Bros Eggbeaters.

 

[cydewaze]

What they've said about aligning the cleat is spot on. I use Speedplays, so no alignment is necessary. You just bolt the cleats up and ride (although you do need to get the fore/aft position right), and you get tons of float. When I switched to the Zeros, I needed to back the limiter screw out on the left pedal to give me a bit more float, because I ride kind of "pidgeon toed" with that foot.

 

[sphen138]

i use speedplay x/2's, and they are the best pedal i've ever ridden. i like them better than the zero's, because they are more simple and the float is limitless. a real knee-saver.