The difference in the grades of SPd's is that the lower grades are hard to get into and easy to get out of. The higher end is easy to get into and hard to get out of. This makes sense if you think about it.

Sure, I don't see how that would compare to riding with flats and flat shoes. Of course using tennis shoes to ride the slippery back of a clipless pedal is going to be uncomfortable.

You mentioned you forgot your road shoes at home - never ever doing that is one of the things I like about riding flats. No 2nd pair of shoes to forget. No need to change shoes at the ride. Etc. Less hassle. Less to go wrong.

I think the text I quoted you with might have written that backwards of how you meant it. Seems like you meant to write that you're using less muscles with clipless with with a great deal more output.

Studies and casual experiments have demonstrated that clipless does not make you faster, at least on a stationary bike or on flat ground. The "great deal less output" is just not true. Whether clipless provides a small advantage that becomes important in road racing is debatable.

The question is whether you want to trade a possible small advantage with clipless for the additional hassle of the system. I bike to work and for enjoyment so to me it's not worth it at all. After years of suffering through using clipless because I believed in the claims I had read, I now think people should be able to make their own decision without the tall tales of fictional clipless advantages I've since realized are not true.

It is not debatable.

Okay dokay.

Wow. It's much harder than i thought. I have managed to clip my left foot in a few times and had no trouble releasing it. Have not successfully clipped my right foot in. Still in the practicing in a doorway stage. Not ready for the road.

What kind of pedals/cleats do you have? Most clipless pedals have an allen screw that adjusts the release. Usually there are arrows indicating which way to turn the screw to make both the entry and release easier. As a beginner, you want the easiest setting to start, After you have learned the routine, you may want to tighten the release up for more security once in.

The other detail that often does not get mentioned is that clipless pedals need to be lubricated. A few drops of TriFlo in the working part of the locking mechanism will keep everything working smoothly.

Stick with it! They are worth the effort to learn!

Ben

Getting the cleat-to-shoe adjustment right is the key to getting clipless to work 'right' It's also the hardest, since you're pretty much doing it by feel, through the bottom of your foot.
Cleats are adjustable side-to-side, as well as front-to-back, and you want to get it right where your foot would naturally land on the pedal. You may need a helper to watch from underneath, to see which way you need to move.
Get your pedal tension set low. For double-sided pedals (with the mechanism on both sides) make sure you have the springs set for both sides. My M-535s have two screws, one for each side.
Also, the cleat screws need to be TIGHT; much tighter than you think, or the cleats may slip.

Some shoe and pedal combinations are easier to get lined up than others, so YMMV.

Point to a road racer that has won a major race on platform pedals.

Thanks for the hints. I made some progress. Rode around my back yard on the grass with my left foot clipped in. I have still not successfully clipped in on the right side even once. I don't have the right size allen wrench to adjust the tension, so I guess I'll have to get one. Of course, my husband just assumed I'm an idiot and didn't believe that we don't have the right size. He nearly stripped the bolt trying to force in one that was too large.

You will need a metric sized allen wrench for the adjustments. Get good ones as more allen head bolt are ruined by cheap allen keys than any other thing, except maybe trying to use SAE sized keys.

One thing I did was put a small piece of masking tape on my shoe exactly where the cleat is on the shoe sole. That will help you position your foot better and then you can pull the tape off..

That's a great idea about the masking tape. I will try that. And I went to the bike shop and got a set of metric allen wrenches. Beautiful day for a ride today.

Have you ever raced? Or at least done the local p-measuring contest ride?

I started out riding flats with toe clips. Then moved to SPD's then to the SL's.

The issue is, pros DID used to ride with toe cages. But, their shoes were still specialized. Read the book "Gironimo" about a guy riding the 1914 Giro in period correct attire and bike. He goes over this in exhaustive detail.

Track racers also still use toe cages, but again, it isn't some floppy super cush tennis shoe crammed into a $10 Amazon.com toe cage on flats.

It's this: https://www.purecycles.com/products/g-race-track-straps

No, I do not race.

It appears that in the mountain biking world everyone pretty much went over to clips. Then Sam Hill came along and refused to ride on anything but flats. He won race after race.

So now there's a debate - have the pros been wearing flats because they're faster, or are they just wearing them because they're copying each other?

Here's a guy I saw on youtube recently who races mountain bikes and prefers clips, but sam hill's wins using flats convinced him to try flats, and he found himself the same speed or faster in flats:

On the first course he's within 1 second time with both. On the second course he's 1:39 to 1:46 - flats are the faster time.

When I say it's "debatable" I don't mean that as a tricky language way to win, I mean it's debateable. It's not even a debate I was trying to get into about if clipess has a slight edge in road riding. Even if it does, the amount of time you'd believably gain would still be a net loss for someone who needs to count changing shoes time unto their total time, like commuters or casual riders do.

So it's debatable in racing disciplines where riders only pedal 10% or less of the timed segments? Sounds good to me.

Exactly. The racing thing isn't a jab or anything, it's just that once you have, you encounter situations you know for fact a flat wouldn't have worked out for you. You also end up taking the wife's greenway cruiser out with the kids and try to do the same junk you'd do on your race rig, and find out real quick it doesn't turn out so well. Lol.

I rode the 1968 "extreme" MTB trail in Costa Rica on flats. I damn wish I had my spare set of SPD's to take on the trip. I ran into issues of my feet slipping off multiple times and had the pedal hit my shins.

There are places flats work great. Then there's not.

If I had a commuter and commute time of less than 20min each way, I'd probably roll in flats.

I will often just treat my SPD-SL pedals as flats if I'm just doing a mellow commute. Works fine with rubber soled shoes.

I don't think I'd like racing XC on flats. I've done STXC on flats and that wasn't so bad. Races are so short, and I'm not that fast of a rider, so didn't matter much.

XC or CX? Bit of a difference.

I bought a cross bike used recently and it came with spd's. I had the shoes already so tried it. It came in super handy. At first there was a hill I was practicing "run ups" on foot. Then said, let's try to make it on the bike. Made it. Would not have happened otherwise.

I bet flats in cross would be fine for a beginner like me. Especially if there are a ton of dismounts. I'm not going to bunny hop barriers and smash my face by going OTB.

I saw this related video in youtube on slickrock's toughest climb:
https://youtu.be/5UJvkPkuXr8

The first guy is on flats. He keeps trying and failing the climb.
The next 2 guys on clipless make the climb first try. The guy taking the video talks about how clipless is supposed to better for climbing because it lets you pull up on the pedal while climbing, etc etc.

But he goes back to the climb. One of the clipless riders walks down the hill and jumps on the bike with flats. He's now riding the worst combination - clipless shoes and flat pedals. He rides the bike from the bottom, and makes the climb on his first attempt. With the worst footwear/combination possible, clipless shoes on flat pedals.

​​​​​​

Update: The guy who installed my pedals put the cleats on my shoes upside down. They work just fine now that I corrected them with my trusty new metric allen wrench.

Hope it wasn't your husband

He owns the bike shop.