Quote Originally Posted by Miranda View Post
The short of it is: how much more difficult is it to get in and out of a single sided pedals, like Look Keo red plates 9 degree float, vs SpeedPlays?
I think the only way my white Zetas have stayed white is due to not having to "kick it over" with ss pedal. I need float for my old injury knee, hope 9 degrees would cut it.
I think most of the contact getting into a single-sided pedal is actually with the cleat itself, not with the upper of the shoe. I have Ultegra pedals, which are a look-style pedal, and I'm pretty sure I don't actually kick the pedal over with my toe, at least not like you would kick a ball -- it's more like I slide into it as it comes over the top of the rotation, and contact with the cleat actually pushes it over. I have silver Zetas and there is only wear/scuffing on one toe (the left) -- yep, from leaning on it at lights. So I don't think you need to worry about extra shoe wear from one-sided pedals .

As for ease of clipping in/out -- I have never tried Speedplays, but I have eggbeaters on my other bike. The eggbeaters are multi-sided, and I think the clip-in motion is fairly similar to Speedplays -- you just step down onto the pedal. Because this depends on having your foot in just the right place when you clip in (the cleat is quite small), I would not say it is any easier than clipping into a single-sided pedal -- just different. I think people generally overstate the difficulty of using single-sided pedals -- just as your body learns how to clip out automatically, it also will adapt to clipping into any style of pedal with practice.

Oakleaf, I'm surprised you had trouble clipping OUT of the eggbeaters. I have my road pedals set to the loosest tension and they still require much more force to release than my eggbeaters ...