New bike pedals
Monday Jul 02, 2007
I took off from work a couple of hours early on Friday, as I'd had it for the week. In my wanderings around north Austin, I came upon Performance Bike and remembered I'd been meaning to visit, so I stopped in. I looked around the whole store and then came back to the pedal section.
I've been riding with some pedals I bought for my old mountain bike years ago, with toe clips. This has been good, but I've been wanting to try the so-called "clipless" pedals. Really this means pedals with space for cleats, along with cleats on your cycling shoes. Problem is, the bike I ride is pretty much the only bike I ride, both for longer rides for training and transportation, and for riding to school with my kids. I really didn't want to add cleated pedals to my bike and be forced to ride with cycling shoes. I found what I think is a good solution for me: The Forte Campus pedal. It has the space for a cleat on one side of the pedal and nothing on the other side. This allows the best of both worlds.
To install the pedals I had to go buy a pedal wrench to get the old pedals off, and some grease for installation, as called for by the brief manual that came with the pedals. After installing, I added cleats to my cycling shoes. Then I tried it out on my block, worked pretty well once I got used to getting my feet in and out. Sam and I took a short ride in the neighborhood, and I was feeling pretty comfortable. On Sunday, I went for my third ACA ride, Pfinally Pflugerville, riding the 24 mile option. The pedals worked great, and seemed to help with leg fatigue, as I really felt good after riding 24 miles.
So far I'm pleased with my new pedals, and it was nice to find something really useful on my first stop at a new bike shop. I'm not so thrilled that Performance Bike is a national chain, as I'd rather spend my money at local bike shops, so I'm not sure how often I'll go back there. But so far I'm a satisfied customer.
