Ever since I got my new bike I’ve wanted to get clipless pedals and shoes. All the serious cyclists use them and I want to be a serious cyclist. Now, the point of clipless pedals is to attach your foot directly to the pedal. You may ask yourself, as I once did, why anyone would want to do that. I can understand why you want to attach your foot to say, a ski or snowboard. You don’t want them to come off of you while you are going down the hill and bindings keep them attached. Of course, they come off if you fall. It is harder to see the same connection with bike pedals. I really don’t need anything keeping me on my bike. Gravity does a pretty good job of that and when gravity fails to keep me on I really don’t want anything holding the pedals to my feet. Like ski bindings, clipless pedals will detach from your foot if you fall and you can pull your feet out. But still, it is somehow different.
Now cyclists are a strange lot known to do strange things for dubious reasons. Take shaving legs. What is the point of that? The best explanation I’ve seen is that if you crash and scape the skin off your leg and you haven’t shaven it, then you’ll get real problems with ingrown hairs as the wound heals. OK, maybe. I think it really is just part of a cyclist’s rite of passage. In rites of passage, individuals are removed from the social group, changed in some way, and re-introduced to the group as someone different. It is a way of helping everyone deal with the change in social role of individuals. In this case, the separation comes from long rides away from home, especially group rides with other cyclists. The change is the leg shaving—a physical indication that you have accepted membership in the cycling world. Your re-introduction into society comes when non-cyclists see that you have shaved your legs. I, by the way, have yet to go through this rite.
Is this pedal thing just another odd cycling thing to make us different and also bind us together in the brother and sisterhood of being attached to your bike? That is surely part of it, but the real reason to clip in is that it improves the efficiency of your pedal stroke…because you can pull up as well as push down. I actually read that clipping in can increase the efficiency of your pedaling by 30%.
So, I got some shoes on Friday and Clem gave me some pedals on Saturday. Sunday I had the bike shop to fit me to my bike with the new clipless pedals and shoes…they adjusted the seat height and position to make sure my feet—now attached to the pedals—were in their optimum position. Even before I took my first ride with the new shoes and pedals, my life improved by 30%. My children were 30% happier, more dedicated to their studies, more likely to listen to me, and, yes, even 30% better looking. My wife and I were 30% more in love and 30% happier with our lives. I took my first ride today and my experience was 30% more satisfying. The traffic was 30% friendlier, the hills were 30% flatter, the route was 30% prettier, the cliff bars tasted 30% better, and the water was 30% more refreshing. The thing was that other things seemed to increase by 30%. There was 30% more traffic on the road, it seemed 30% bumpier, the little rat-dog that chases me on Pincushion Road seemed 30% more determined and 30% faster, and it felt 30% colder. My ass hurt 30% more, I got tired 30% faster, and when I was finished with the ride I was 30% more tired.
So, the big question…did that 30% increase in pedaling efficiency pay dividends on the ride? Well, actually no. I rode my usual 30-mile ride, but I did it at a slower pace than usual. While I did feel how being attached to the pedals allowed me to get more out of the pedaling, it also helped me discover a whole new set of muscles that haven’t been participating in my cycling adventure…the ones that help to pull the pedals up after the down stroke. So now I feel pretty wiped out and drained and I know tomorrow there will be new muscles hurting.
So, all in all, the bump my life got from the new pedals was cancelled out by the bump my life’s challenges got, too. My cycling was not instantly improved, either. The pedals didn’t change my life. But, at this point I have everything I need to start the cycling season. No more obsessing about bikes for sale on EBay or which shoes to buy. No more waiting to get the pedals, shoes, and my bike set up. I have nothing left to focus on except actually riding and getting ready to ride 100 miles.
Of course, there is still that cycling computer that will give me heart rate and cadence data…there are a ton of those in EBay right now.
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