On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

Yesterday, full of self-loathing, I sat addicted to my laptop watching the final 45 km of Liege-Bastogne-Liege. I can't help it. I'm addicted. But the spring classics are done now, right? I'm free, right? I'll be able to resist the daily lure of the Giro, right? Sigh. But it was an exciting finish. Caruso and Pozzovivo got a gap which looked like it might just hold... then Daniel Martin of Garmin-Sharp, last year's winner, bridged up, passing the weaker Pozzovivo and just about reaching Caruso. One more corner, then 300 meters to the repeat victory... But amazingly, he crashed in the corner. Jonathan Vaughters, his manager, reacted: Heartbreak. — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) April 27, 2014 Here's the video on YouTube . As reported by CyclingNews , Daniel's post-race comments were: “It’s one thing to make a mistake or know what you’ve done but we figure that there’s a patch of oil or something. I think I had tears in my eyes before I even h...

On the subject of pedals... I like Speedplay and have used them for more years than I like to admit. They're light, simple, have a low stack height, easy to clip into, compact, and double-sided (wait, that's implicit with "easy to clip into"), and works fine with standard street shoes (I'm not always wearing cycling shoes). But they don't handle dirt well and the cleats are not compatible with walking. These are okay issues for many bike races, where you clip and go, but for other types of riding, being able to walk gets a higher priority. That's where mountain bike pedals come in. Speedplay came out with a mountain bike pedal, the Frog. But it shares only a few of the assets of the road pedal. It's heavy, clunky, has a large stack height, isn't so easy to clip into (it has a phantom clip-in mode so you need to verify engagement once you feel a click), and doesn't work well with street shoes. So Speedplay announced the Syzr at Interbike in...

When I got fit at 3D Bike Fit , it was recommended I switch from Speedplay to Shimano pedals due to the more stable platform and greater resistance to pedal wear. I gave these a try, and indeed the feeling of connectedness was palpable. I expected to feel claustrophobic, accustomed to the freedom of Speedplay's rotational float over many years, but with Kevin Bailey's expert cleat placement, my foot was where it wanted to be and there was no need for it to be anywhere else. As long as I didn't think about the fact my foot was constrained, I was fine. And the pedals were light (248.0 grams on my scale), especially considered in combination with the cleat hardware, which is much lighter than a Speedplay cleat with adaptor plate (although I have no adaptor plate on my Bont Speedplay-drilled shoes). The only time I noticed the constrained position was when coasting. I found that when I coasted, I liked to move my foot around a bit to stretch the muscles. This isn't ...

I've been riding Speedplays way longer than I care to admit, since they sponsored the Stanford Cycling club, of which I was a member. After one-too-many clumsy clip-ins into my Times, I switched to the double-sided Speedplays, and haven't looked back. I really like Speedplays, not least because they're quite rideable in street shoes, as well, so if I need to cruise across town in my street shoes, no fuss with attaching special platforms or anything. When I got them, there was only the X-series (X-1 and X-2, with X-3 and the Light Action added later). Speedplay eventually released the "Zeros", short for "X-0", although really a separate design. According to someone I recently chatted with, Speedplay Zeros are considered by Speedplay to be "mechanically superior in every way" to the "legacy" X-series. Well, "superior" except that they were more expensive and are heavier: 8 grams more for the cleats. Okay, 8 grams isn...