I'm still very new at this, but this has been my novice experience so far. I've been riding with my husband's Diodoro Chili shoes, which is a mountain bike shoe with a sturdy sole, and platform pedals. His shoes are a half-size big for me (they have a little toe wiggle room, but everything else fits fine), but it's still good for me to ride with sturdy sole bike shoes.

As soon as we can afford it, I'm going to get some shoes of my own as well as clipless pedals, but I'm still going to ride with my platform pedals for a while until I get the hang of my new shoes. Then I'll put the hook thingy onto the shoes and try clipless.

I know that the first few times I rode, I rode with my New Balance cross trainers, but as soon as I rode with the cycling shoes, my upper thighs were KILLING me. I could tell that I was working a whole new set of muscles and my power transfer was getting better. But it's taken some getting used to getting off and on the platform pedals with the sturdier shoes.

I can't wait until I can get my own pair of cycling shoes. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to go with mountainbike shoes that are streamlined, like the Diodoro's I'm using now.