A pros thought on pedals....

[Tony S]

Not saying the session people aren't working hard. You still have to climb back up the hill.

 

[Ross Biff]

Sorry to take us back in the general direction of the original question behind the thread, but I'm doing it ... or attempting to do it.

Consider a typical road ride. I think this is what most of us do: You find a loop that looks good. It may be short or long, easy or hard, convoluted or circular, depending on how much time, motivation, masochism, and friendly influence are in play. Regardless, you ride it from start to finish and then you're done. At the end you take satisfaction in how many miles you went, how many places you saw, how many different kinds of terrain you rode, etc. Along the way it's a long, hard, more or less aerobic slog. Your gear and clothing, including your shoes and pedals, reflect this.

For me - not speaking for anyone else here - 95% of the rides most of my MTB friends and I take here in New England are still essentially like this. Yeah, we might re-do an especially fun section, and there will likely be parts of a trail we retrace in the attempt to string a route together. But fundamentally we are traversing a lot of trail one time and keep on trucking until we get back to where we started. Our clothing, shoes, and pedals still mostly reflect this (with occasional grudging accommodation of intense fashion pressure) and resemble roadie gear.

Over the last 5 years or so I have noticed a big influx of mostly younger riders who don't ride like this at all. I suspect the behavior is coming to northern New England much later than to some other parts of the country, such as the PNW. It's facilitated in great part by the emergence of flow trails here and there, whose length is measured in meters, not kilometers, and which are built to ride in a single direction. These riders spend most of their time sessioning short sections of trail over and over. They may even be tweaking the trail itself on the same occasion. In this way they resemble kids hanging out in the terrain park more than they resemble XC skiers or even conventional alpine skiers. You see where this is going, right? The pedals that these folks choose are going to be optimized for "messing around on bikes," not for ticking off the miles. The weight - and, OMG, insane excess heat - that goes along with baggie shorts is worth it for the "look" but also because you spend more time on your butt in the dirt.

Edit: AND STAY OFF MY LAWN!

Absolutely. The shoes these guys wear need to enable repeated walks with a little riding in between. Has anyone noticed the amount of footage in MTB vids of riders pushing bikes up hill with a full face helmet perched on top of their heads? Clip-ins all the way for me. The main thing I noticed on my very first clipped in ride was the feeling of attachment and control of the REAR of my bike. Most of my MTB shoes have sucked at walking up hills but that's not really my type of riding.

 

[cantunamunch]

I just realized that the other difference between my MTB and gravel is the ovals. I wonder if the oval is phased to make the ass work more.

Remember Power Pedals? I know, I know, they were totally phased exactly opposite to modern ovals (spec. excluding Biopace here).

Power pedals

It took me a couple of years, but finally I got them! Most probably not for riding, but great stuff for my collection, for exhibitions, thi...

progettopistavintage.blogspot.com

I still think they were onto something in the muscle-group transition zones - something that even fixies can't give us, since it is completely possible to change foot angle in a MGTZ with a fixie and a free spinning pedal.