Rei's cover home page video is about a woman who won the Arizona trail race. Kinda like the Continental Divide race. Great video! Go to Rei and watch it.
And she did it in tennis shoes and platform pedals.
Pass me another plate of crow!!!

Lael won the Divide race, womens division, last year and set a record. She didn't win the Arizon race.

The girl has a great attitude, nice smile and is tough as nails.
I liked the part where a she and the camera person joke about her bivy sack.

Some people use platform pedals even though they are horribly wrong in every sense of the word and should be burned to death at the stake ; )

Foot retention is great but not always for everyone.

It may take a few months, but it seems you are eventually able to admit your preconceived opinions are baseless. Strong work there.

I rode some gravel this past weekend, it was a new route with hill after hill after hill so constantly climbing or coasting. I used the platform side of my SPDs on a couple descents as the gravel was extremely loose and deep on those parts of the ride. I felt more comfortable knowing I could get a foot or both down immediately if necessary.

I saw the video the other day and liked it. I really like platform pedals for commuting and may yet use them for touring as well.

One thing to note. She pedaled her bike from Alaska to the start of the Divide race. Az/ Mexico border. And then won the divide race. Yikes.

And two more things to note:

1. She did the Divide race the first time while having bronchitis, even having to take a (brief) moment off to go to the hospital.
2. She actually did the Divide route TWICE in 2015, the second time being a personal best solo race against herself. She shaved a few days of time off her first race, since she was in better health.

In short, Lael is amazing!

You should read Goran Kropp's book, Ultimate High. He rode his bike from Sweden to Mt Everest, then summited without oxygen. Then he rode home. It sort of puts everything else in perspective.

Sadly, he died a decade ago mountaineering in Washington.

Platforms aren't inefficient, they just provide less pedal contact confidence. It's true that you can't pull on the upstroke with them, but you shouldn't be doing that very often anyway, it's an unnatural stroke not suited for steady cruising. Our legs are built to deliver powerful downstrokes and merely lighten on the upstroke.

Really ?. I was always taught (25 years ago) to NOT "deliver powerful downstrokes", instead to try to pull the foot/pedal thru the bottom of the stroke in a manner described as "scrapping dogsh_t off the bottom of your foot".

Theory was it's easier on the quad muscles and the knees, as well as promoting spinning.

Certainly the use of clipless pedals helps with this.

That's the bottom of the downstroke, and the pulling-back aspect of it shouldn't be very significant. Most people recommending it are basically just saying that you should be ankling a little, so that your foot ends up pointing up in the middle of the downstroke and is starting to point down at the bottom of the downstroke; another way of describing it is that your heel motion should slightly anticipate the upstroke. It works perfectly naturally on platforms.

Think goopy dogsh*t that you're casually wiping off on a small rock.