Here's a fun one for the clipless conversations/debates that made the final 17 or so miles of Sunday's ride a little challenging.

I'm out for a leisurely 40 mile out and back on a MUP and there is a section through a forest preserve (chicago-speak for 'park') that has some short, but quite steep, hills. This was my first time on this part of the trail and on the way back decided I was feeling pretty good, so foolishly decided to upshift and mash my way up one of the steeper sections.

To my utter astonishment*, the hill had quite a grade to it (though I can't tell you what that is, because I don't have one of them fancy Garmins) and my legs pretty much stopped being able to turn the crank about halfway up. That moment of "Oh, *@#*" occurs and there is no way the RD is going to downshift under the load.

Down I go on my left side.... sliding about 10 feet backwards in the process. All I can do is laugh. All Psimet could do was laugh. If he had a video camera, it would have been AFV material and we'd be $10,000 richer.

Well, I've had clipless falls before so this was no big deal, right? Walk the bike to the top of the hill and check everything out. Saddle's straight, wheels are fine, spin the crank to make sure the gears are okay. Check, check, and check. All's well.

Wrong. I go to clip back in and something is wrong with my left pedal. Was I trying to clip onto the bottom of the pedal? No.... Hmm... Stop again to check it out and find out the cleat had a big chunk of the tip snap off!



Anyone had this happen before? It's easier than having a whole pedal fall off halfway through a ride, but still a strange way to ride clipless. Could feather the rear part of the cleat into the pedal, but had to be careful not to move my foot forward, since there was no engagement point.

*I should not have been astonished, as mashing is not my strong point. Ever.

wow that is rather impressive, I've not seen that before, on a side note I fell over today(well yesterday by now, too) but unfortunately it wasn't as good as running out of oomph on a climb rather it was trying to impress the wife with my mad balance skills, turns out thinking I have balance is just mad...

How old are the cleats? I had Keo cleats break in the EXACT same place and Look covered the five (5) sets of cleats I snapped under warranty. They said they'd been hearing a lot of reports of problems. So, make sure to take that to your LBS and have them call their LOOK distributor.

I've heard of 2 other situation of keos snapping after allot of use. I think I might replace mine as preventive or throw a spare in the saddle bag.

I thought I've heard a few cases now of the Keo cleats failing....or was it the pedals. I dunno....either or. All I know is I like my "heavy" A5.1's with the "old" cleats.

tastes great.

The cleat broke under a crash and release situation the cleat was not designed for, or perhaps the release was so awkward that the breaking cleat actually saved a breaking knee. Although I guess there have been a few Keo cleats breaking that probably shouldn't have.

I think you need to do some more MTB riding on a hardtail and get those bike handling skills up.

I think Red Formans normal response to Eric is in order for Cylowe.

But if you want that $10,000 AFV shot, go reinact the fall. Almost everything on that show is staged by the entrants. My friend won the prize in 1990 from a staged ski scene.

You snapped 5 sets of these?

Mine are not that old. Just installed last September and only a few rides into this year. Not old enough to snap from my powerful and mighty pedalling, for sure. They snapped when I fell.

So do McEwen and Hushovd and others get a new set of cleats every week to prevent this from happening to them?

Ahh... take them to the LBS...

Herein lies one of the tripwires of ordering from PBK. I guess a visit to the UK is in order!

I'm quite tempted to go back to less filling.

Look cleats as they wear thin are prone to break and release unintentionally. You need to inspect and replace them as they show wear. Had a teamate with a rather catastrophic failure.

That's the main reason I switched to Speedplay.

Obviously a lot of people, including professionals, use Looks without incident. However I would bet that the professsionals using them have their cleats replaced fairly often.

Mine taste great (SL's). and I walk anywhere I want & they look gnarly, still work, I've never broken one and only changed cleats once in the 3 years I've owned 'em. Have 2 spare sets of cleats in the bin right now. Maybe some day I'll need them.

3 years? I changed to a new pair after +/-6 months.

Maybe it was a placebo effect, but I did feel some difference after doing that.

I changed the first ones at about 2 years, now have a year on my current set. They do work better new, no doubt, but they will work even though they get amazingly chewed up and flatttened. I have been surprised by this, and have never broken one.

New equipment placebo effect is always a good one.

I had a pair of generic Look-type cleats break in a crash. Mine broke towards the rear. Riding home after that was strange, like riding with a ton of float. I didn't really blame them for breaking in a crash. I was just glad my foot didn't stay stuck in the pedal.

I have an old picture of it floating around somewhere.

Mine broke like that after ~2000 miles this season. Sprinting on it and it just broke, theyre got a soft plastic up front that is prone to spliting.

His Keos are brand new. Cleats are basically brand new. Barely 200 miles tops.

Now...my take on the incident....

We're just starting in the preserve when I realize that he's never been in there before. This preserve is some geological abnormality in the region. Kind of like a little chunk of Wisconsin broke off and drifted south. It's a series of severe, short, up-downs...like a freeking roller coaster.

I laid my bike down going through there last year on a sweeping off-camber curve that ended up having 2 turn radii...the second being the tighter one of course.

So I'm warning CyLowe the whole time..."Man, these are steeper than they look. Don't let them fool you. My tire usually loses grip climbing a couple of these at the end. Take it easy. I've laid it down going through here......" etc....

I think CyLowe turned all of this into some sort of direct challenge. We were at the bottom of a particularly steep section towards the end, and he turns to me (giving me "the look" I'm pretty sure ) I think I remember he was talking about the Horrible Hilly, and how I was going to die on it, and proceeded to mash the hill. I can't remember exactly...I was busy downshifting.

Well he gets about 1/4 to 1/2 way up this thing and I see him vere left and hear a gun shot. Turns out it's his drivetrain trying to drop a gear on the cassette. I look down at his cassette and see that he's 3/4 of the way up it as he's attempting to downshift.

I think to myself, "he's going to bail." Just then he lays it over.

Now let's recap some of the things I've seen CyLowe do over the last year or so.
1. First ride we went on he did a clipless fall at an intersection (probably my fault becasue I was in front and did a stall at startup)

2. His first road clipless pedals were some Ritchey's that had their retaining ring let go...pedal came off the spindle while still attached to his foot, and he went careening off the road and came inches from face planting into the side of a semi-trailer

3. This hill climbing adventure.

As he mentioned he gets up, walks it off, feels embarassed, and goes to clip back in and can't. My first reaction is that he twisted the cleat way out of position. He fall hard to the side and from experience I thought maybe he hadn't tightened down the cleat bolts tight enough.

Then I hear him say "OH SNAP!"...literally. We were quite a ways out too. He cycled through it like a champ. I racked my brain for any solution I could come up, but he just carried on.

While riding with CyLowe can be entertaining, you have to give it to the man...he knows how to suffer through mechanicals. Me, I throw in the towell and call for backup.

...BTW I'm still laughing. It must have really hurt and I feel bad, but that was some funny stuff.

More like 400, but still not enough to just snap. It had to be the force of the fall, plus I had the tension pretty high (for me, that is). Glad it was the cleat and not a ligament, for sure.
No ill effects, amazingly enough. The least impact from a clipless fall I've experienced. It must have been comical because I was laughing before I even hit the deck.

In your photo, they look like they're made out of plastic - are they? Yeah, I know that's a noob question, but hey, I've got to learn sometime.

yes

He PM'd me that it was his mechanics fault.

Yeah...his mechanic is a moron.

I broke a cleat in mostly the same place but they probably were about 8 months old. I just wrote it off as the cleat being old and needing replacing as the wear indicator was showing.

Psimet and CycLowe:

Which forest preserve were you riding in? I'm down the river in Geneva.

Dave

North side of Crystal lake. I'll map it and post a link.

EDIT:First time using Bikely....let me know if this link works

https://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path...d-Sternes-Park

Obviously, anticipating the need to shift is the answer. However, when you're caught in this situation, if you give it one or two pedal strokes as hard as you can to accelerate the bike, then soft pedal, and shift quickly (before you fall over) as you soft pedal you can get it to shift.