Forward cleat - more pedal rpm, higher saddle, more calves, less sustainable power. I personally cramp more and my Achilles gets really stressed. It's how I know I put my cleat too far forward.

More to the back cleat - lower rpm, lower saddle, more hamstrings, more sustainable power, less top speed. This is a "pro" thing - Lemond joked about how all Italians pros would get whatever shoe, slam the cleat all the way back, and call it a day on cleat adjustment. I cramp my hamstrings more and I lose some top speed.

In my old age I prefer a more rearward cleat position. It matches the loss of speed nicely. I surprised myself a couple shoes ago when I realized I wanted to move the cleats further back and I couldn't. I used to move my cleats all the way forward.

I also ankle quite aggressively in certain situations, not on purpose. My foot is literally vertical at the top of the pedal stroke. I think this is why the forward cleat worked well with me earlier, but now, at a lower cadence, a more rearward cleat is fine.

"Mid sole" - I haven't tried it but one of the CyclingNews fitness editor/advisor/Q&A people really pushed this for a few years. I think the Women's World Champ used this position, but I'm not sure if that's the one that got caught doping or not. Whenever I hear of someone improving exponentially, I think of the athletes that started a drug regime and attributed their improvement to some weird technical thing. Or I think of the lying guy that attributed his 20% gain to a crank system he used, when in fact he just copy/pasted data into the csv files to make nice power graphs (really!). Anyway, not many people use the midsole. It's supposed to pretty much kill your sprint but improve your sustainable power by a lot, like EPO-lot.

I'm curious about Rotor cranks because pros actually use them, even Thor. But maybe that's why he's not sprinting well in the faster sprints. Who knows.

cdr