Quote Originally Posted by DebW View Post
If you do long rides on quill pedals in soft soled shoes, you start feeling the vertical plates of the pedal after awhile. Of course, it depends on the shoe to some extent. A softer shoe will slip less on the pedal, but your feet will feel it more. I remember the old days of getting grooves in my sneakers from quill pedals. But when you tightened the toe straps, they did hold you in fairly effectively. Racers wore rigid soled cleated shoes with quill pedals and clips+straps. The cleat was a grooved metal plate that was nailed on the shoe and held your foot securely when the strap was tightened. Of course, you couldn't removed your foot from the pedal until you reached down and loosened the strap. [And people complain about clipless systems?!?!] With the old shoes, you rode them without the cleat until the pedal left a mark on the shoe, then you went to a cobbler and had the cleat tacked on 1/8" forward of the mark (so your toes weren't pressed against the toe clip). There were also some uncleated riding shoes that were basically sneakers with stiffeners in the sole of the forefoot to make the quill pedals more comfortable.

That's your history lesson for today, kid.
I am imagining the wipeouts as people got tangled in their bikes because they couldn't get their feet loose