The cleats are whatever came with my shoes, but I'm 99% sure they're not the multi-directional release.

To this eye it doesn't look terribly worn, but hey, first pair of clipless so I don't necessarily know what I'm looking for either.

My gut instinct is that it was caused by the loose tension. I just wanted to make sure I took all steps to fix the problem so that it won't result in catastrophic failure down the road. When adjusting tension on spds am I just cranking willy-nilly til it feels tight when I snap in? It moves in discrete "clicks" from what I remember, is there a maximum?