Clipless Question

[Possegal]

A few weeks ago I was sort of following my niece around as she ran the Frederick marathon. At one point I was letting her run on while I rode across the street to a bit of a grassy patch where a friend of ours and two unknown to me people were standing cheering her on. I unclipped my one foot and then road up onto the grass which looked pretty smooth. Well the jarring of hitting the grass clipped me back in and then my bike came to a stop. I yelled out something like "SAVE ME" and luckily, unbeknownst to me, the two other people were cyclists and knew exactly what had happened. Both reached out and grabbed the handlebars and one said - the rough terrain clipped you back in, didn't it?

Moral is = in that instance, don't hover the foot over the pedal, you may find yourself clipped back in by something other than your own power.

[PrincessAna]

Thanks for all the tips!

I put the frogs on this morning, practiced clipping in and out for a while, and decided to go for a ride. Out on the trail, I clipped in my right foot, started pedaling, and promptly fell over. Oww. I wish I had chosen a different starting place because there was a 7inch high pavement ridge to my right, which met up with my knee in an unfriendly way. The scrape isn't too bad, but I think it's kind of bruised too. I'm icing it now, in hopes that it won't be too painful for bowling tonight.

Anyways, I wasn't about to give up, so I moved my bike to a safer location and managed to get going this time I am still kind of clumsy clipping in, so I found that I need to do 1-2 rotations with my unclipped foot staying unclipped to get up some momentum before I try to clip that foot in as well. The good news is that I did not fall again! I practiced clipping, unclipping, stopping, pedaling not clipped in, and so on all during the ride. They're certainly not reflexes yet, but if I give myself enough time, I can get out of em Oh, and I did find once or twice I had unclipped and clipped back in by accident. I made a point of pedaling unclipped on the middle of my foot after that.

It was cool though actually riding in my bike shoes, which previously I'd only used on my stationary bike. And when I was clipped in, I knew I wouldn't "fall off" the pedals like I sometimes did on the flats.

Anastasia

[F8th637]

Anastasia, sounds like a fairly normal intro into clipless pedal riding. It will only get easier from here. . or so they tell me anyway.