First clipped ride

[ivorygorgon]

We went for our third MTB ride on Sunday. I fell about 15x because my shoes would simply not come out of the clips. I was trying like mad, but couldn't do it. After about my 3rd fall, DH loosened them a bit, but I still couldn't get my foot out. He loosened again, still no cigar. Finally, he realized that the pedals are two sided and he was only loosening 1 side. I had a pretty bad fall and hit my hand on a rock. My hand is pretty swollen.

DH has now loosened up both sides of each pedal all the way, so we will see. I am pretty scared and demoralized at this point.

Any pointers?

[papaver]

We went for our third MTB ride on Sunday. I fell about 15x because my shoes would simply not come out of the clips. I was trying like mad, but couldn't do it. After about my 3rd fall, DH loosened them a bit, but I still couldn't get my foot out. He loosened again, still no cigar. Finally, he realized that the pedals are two sided and he was only loosening 1 side. I had a pretty bad fall and hit my hand on a rock. My hand is pretty swollen.

DH has now loosened up both sides of each pedal all the way, so we will see. I am pretty scared and demoralized at this point.

Any pointers?

Well, i have special clipless pedals for girls... they are easy to click in and out.

[ASammy1]

My maiden voyage was incident free, but this past Saturday I fell twice! The first time I just forgot to unclip. The second time (literally 5 minutes later) I unclipped left and leaned right...

[wackyjacky1]

These stories make me scared to death to go clipless. I think I'll stick with toe clips.

[RoadRaven]

Best advice I ever got here at TE was about clipping in and out of pedals.

And subsequently I share everytime the topic comes up and no-one has beaten me to it.

Riding clipped into pedals is easy as long as you remember TWO things... yep, only two.

1. Always unclip with the same foot (doesn't work so well for off-roaders, but if you are a roadie, you can do this). If you train your mind/foot to always unclip on the same side, in an emergancy/quick stop, your muscle memory will do what you expect to do.

2. Turn your front wheel away from the foot you unclip. Your bike will always lean toward you and your foot will reach the ground before the rest of your body.

[alpinerabbit]

I have a bum ankle and have trouble with my range of motion and am terrified to go clipless!
What's the best way to practice if you don't have a trainer?

The angle you need to turn/twist to get out is actually quite small. So is the force required if the tension is not set very high.
Surely a LBS would let you try before you buy?

I spent Thu evening with my workmate who just got a new MTB with clipless and she did not fall, but we also just practiced around her neigborhood.

First I had her hold on to a fence to try the first few times. then we practiced -
In and out, in and out, first one foot with the other rested on the non-clip side of her pedal (she got one-sided ones), then stopping and starting, then in and out with both feet alternating while riding, finally both in, stopping, starting again. Maybe a quarter of an hour and 5 ins and outs?
Then along some gravel paths in the park, & finally up a little incline, all very slow. Not even at the very end when I made an abrupt stop (unintended) and there was nowhere for her to go to get around me did she fall.

[kenyonchris]

I have Look clipless on my road bike, plain ol' spds on my road bike, I have been riding clipless for years on my roadbike and a while on my Mtb, and I still fall over! I fall over regularly on the start of most rallies and organized rides, because I tempt fate by clipping in while going at a snail's pace.
On my MTB, I keep the tension quite loose so that I can clip out quickly if I need to put a foot down. I have learned the uber-cool look of grabbing a tree and staying clipped in if I am waiting for people to catch up or we are resting...but I have also lost all my uber-cool when I push off and am in too tough a gear and fall over.
I like the SPDs on my mtb much better than the Looks for ease of clipping in and out...and of course, the SPDS are set up to be easy. The Looks are great while I am pedaling, but if I am riding in traffic it is a pain.
Keep your elbows in, tuck your chin and fall if you are going to fall. Then look up, grin, and hopefully someone is grinning back at you! The worst is when everyone is doing that "look-away-we- saw-nothing" thing.

[MyLitespeed]

I wonder what motorist think when they see up slowly fall over when we are at an almost complete standstill. They must laugh their heads off thinking we just plain can't ride a bike.

When I was riding Shimano 747's, my cleat got stuck and I couldn't unclip, over I went. It must have looked like Laugh In.

Now I have Crank Bros. Candy SL and love them, absolutely no problems getting in or out and have never come close to being stuck in them.

The likelihood of falling over in clipless are probably pretty good, but most of the time you are not going very fast so it's really no big deal, more bruised ego then anything.

[MRS HORSEPOWER]

I remember my first clipped in ride...I feel after "forgetting" to unclip the pain of hitting the ground "helped" me remember...LOL!!

I also Rode around for like a 1/2 hour clipping and un-clipping over and over...became a habit.

When I race BMX you only have like 10 seconds to clip in before they drop the gate, so you have to have a "system" down.

[jessica47201]

Well, I went for a 10 mile ride today, my second ride on my eggbeaters and everything went great. My DH and I were just riding along when suddenly he got to close to the edge of the road and went off, but he was weaving everywhere, so I just braked really hard, to get out of the way. And at the last second i was like oh crap, I gotta unclip!!!! Well i did just in time, I didn't fall over and neither did my DH, he recovered nicely!!!

[ZenSojourner]

Ahhh, the wonders of going clipless! How well I remember my experience learning to clip in/ clip out.

My first clipless pedals were Performance Bicycle house-brand cheapies that came with a really bad pair of clipless shoes. They looked sort of like this, only cheaper and flimsier:



I see that Performance no longer sells a house brand clipless pedal. Possibly because of recalls in the late 90's. They wouldn't be the first company damaged by quality problems when dealing with crap made in China.

The pedals on my new bike (Terry Madeleine) are clipless on one side and platform (regular pedal) on the other, so if I want to hop on without clipping in, my foot won't be constantly slipping off the tiny profile presented by purely clipless pedals. They're also Real Shimano's



These are nice, substantial pedals. I like them. Toe clips and cages scare the holy livin' crap out of me and there's no way I would even CONSIDER tying myself to the bike that way.

*SHUDDER*

When I first got clipless pedals, I actually carried handiwipes (for cleaning off road grit and ground in dirt), large gauze pads, adhesive tape, and various antibacterial agents in the car because it was a given that I was going to come back banged up, scraped up, and bleeding.

This wasn't because I kept falling off, although I did that a time or two. Or three. No, it was because I kept scraping my legs on the pedals themselves. Don't ask me how. I could never figure it out, nor could anyone watching me (and I guarantee you, pretty soon I had the WHOLE BIKE CLUB watching me trying to figure it out).

I think I just had a pair of bloodthirsty vampire pedals. They had to be lunging out at me to get a bite. There's just no other explanation. Beware cheap stuff, for one way or another, you pay for it. Apparently I was paying in blood.

The first time I rode with the clipless pedals was on a group ride (of course it would be, so the greatest possible number of people could witness my humiliation). We had barely started, coasted up to a stop sign, came to a gradual stop, I went to put my foot down and found it glued to the bike. Slowly, slowly, and oh so gracefully (not!) I listed to the left and fell over. The guy nearest me turned at the sound of the crash, looked at me calmly as I lay there stunned and entangled with my bike, and brightly said, "New clipless pedals?"

Well. I got used to them and I rode clipped in for a couple of years before giving up the old almost-fits-bike (though I didn't know that at the time). I had moved to rural MO from "bike-friendly" Portland, OR, and I was living 5 miles down a dirt road. The nearest pavement had about 3" of berm, then it generally either ran into a 50' high wall of rock, or it dropped off into a 30' ditch. And people driving down the county road believed they owned BOTH lanes. Trust me, it wasn't a place to be on a road bike. I'm pretty sure the local wolf population may have mistaken me for a deer had I tried.

Then about 3 years ago I went back to school and decided, since I was once again living surrounded by actual pavement, to try cycling again. Hauled out the old almost-fits Trek and discovered I couldn't get more than about 10 miles before I was in excruciating agony. At first I thought it was the fact that I had aged almost 10 years since last being on a bike, but eventually I convinced myself to try a Terry. The Terry was great! I put 126 miles on it the first two weeks I had it. I put the Real Shimano clipless pedals on it and (one would think) I was all set!

Here's the thing. In the nearly 3 years since I've had the bike - call it two, since I was unable to ride all last year due to an injury that resulted in frozen shoulder - I have never clipped in. Not once. I wear the shoes. I have the clipless side up. And before you know it, lickety split, I've flipped the pedal over to the "plain" side, vowing that NEXT TIME FOR SURE, I will clip in.

I'm not new to clipless pedals. It was not particularly traumatic for me to learn to use them the first time (well, other than the vampiric nature of the things, which this pair has never shown).

I have clipped in and out to make sure the tension is right, that I've got that heel twist down.

Yet when it comes to clipping in for real, I CANNOT bring myself to do it.

Riddle me THAT, Batman.

[Zen]

Well, i have special clipless pedals for girls...

Huh? Are you serious? I can't tell

2. Turn your front wheel away from the foot you unclip. Your bike will always lean toward you and your foot will reach the ground before the rest of your body.

I don't understand that either

[papaver]

Huh? Are you serious? I can't tell

Yes i'm serious.

[RoadRaven]

2. Turn your front wheel away from the foot you unclip. Your bike will always lean toward you and your foot will reach the ground before the rest of your body.

I don't understand that either

Oh wise, wise Zen... you must be having tired moment...

Stand up, in front of the PC screen... pretend you are standing over your trusty steed.
Now, unclip your left foot and place it on the ground (I say left, because that is the one I always use).

OK, as your foot touches the ground, turn your handle bars towards the right - as if you were turning round a right-hand corner.


Now go to your real bike and stand over it... try turning the handle bars a little to the right, as if you were beginning to go round a right-hand corner - you only need to turn them a little and you will notice the bike will begin to move to the left back into you.


This is good, because if you unclip always with the same foot (for me, the left) and always turn your bars slightly the opposite way (for me that is right) your bike will always lean into you and you should avoid the dreaded slow-mo tumble.


Hope this makes it clearer for you, my friend.

[andtckrtoo]

Well, i have special clipless pedals for girls... they are easy to click in and out.

I've never heard of such a thing. I start with Frog Speedplays and found that the clip tension was so light that if I went of a big bump, I cam unclipped. That was rather annoying, so after a while, I switched to SPD. My bike shop set them at a lower tension, making it easier to unclip, but my feet tend to stay clipped easily. I haven't falled with the SPD's but I've done my share of falling with the Speedplays - they may have unclipped when I went over a bump, but when I needed them to unclip they were noticeably stubborn.