Pedals for CX?

[Owlie]

Not a cross racer or anything of the sort, but: I have M540s on my roadie, and the one time I had to walk the bike through dirt*, I had a heck of a time clipping back in or out until I stopped and dug the gunk out of the cleat with a stick. That didn't help much--I had to hose my shoes down.

*It wasn't so much dirt as a wet mixture of clay, sand and bits of rock. I think the composition didn't help anything--I'm pretty sure it's one step shy of cement!

[zoom-zoom]

Not a cross racer or anything of the sort, but: I have M540s on my roadie, and the one time I had to walk the bike through dirt*, I had a heck of a time clipping back in or out until I stopped and dug the gunk out of the cleat with a stick. That didn't help much--I had to hose my shoes down.

*It wasn't so much dirt as a wet mixture of clay, sand and bits of rock. I think the composition didn't help anything--I'm pretty sure it's one step shy of cement!

That sounds like the soil where my DH grew up in central IL.

My hubby thought of something else that might be making things a bit trickier. I have the BikeFit.com cleats that have a 1º tilt built-in. I'm going to switch back to regular cleats to see if that helps (perfect alignment isn't nearly as big an issue for a 30ish minute race or bombing-around on my mountain bike as it was when I was doing 50+ milers on my road bike with the SPD pedals and these shoes). I'm also going to see if putting some patches of duct tape on the slippery carbon bits of the forefoot of my shoes helps. Once I'm moving I seem to have an easier time getting clipped-in. I need to learn how to do a rolling mount (and dismount), like the skilled CX folks do!

[Owlie]

Our soil is mostly clay with a bit of topsoil thrown on! This was from a drainage ditch (for a bridge that goes over the bike trail) that had a massive slide after a heavy rainstorm, so it's hardly representative of the area. (The clay is, though!)