repechage

yes, an old long ago race competitor pulled out at the Carson velodrome- extended recovery.
the Shimano pedals are good at that track due to the steep banking. I have a pair just for that purpose. With a good pair of Binda Extra straps.
the keo pedals are popular too - there is a mod to make them a more specific manual release.
half way to a Cinelli M-71.

when I ride home in street shoes I really have to think about not pulling back on the pedals especially on the climb.

the notion that an unretained foot to pedal is of no help is just an ignorant opinion. I think it could easily be proven on an ergometer.

beng1

It is run by a regional hospital chain/health insurance agency, and all private insurance corporations are criminal. I can put a triathalon on any day of the week for free, just have a bunch of friends show up down by the lake and do it. Everyone starts at the same time, first one back to the start/finish wins.

chip.hedler

Mathematically, Work = Force x Distance. Not counting rolling resistance and air resistance, traveling at a given steady speed on a dead flat path shouldn't require additional force or be affected by the combined weight of the bike and rider. As soon as you have even slight undulations in road elevation or make even minor adjustments in speed to maintain a given average, weight starts to be involved because the mass needs to be lifted and/or accelerated, requiring additional force (F = m * a). As for the effect of weight on rolling resistance, I'd think that might be a factor, what with the ongoing flexing of tire shape as the wheels revolve, and perhaps increased pressure of the cones, bearings, and bearing races on each other. All these effects might seem so small in magnitude to be trivial, but if you're already working close to your limit overcoming air resistance (the major source of resistance), they could push you past an output level that you could sustain.

smd4

Riiiight...

No life guards, no police, no EMS on-site. No t-shirts, no awards. No porta-potties, no water, no timing equipment, no permits...Then there's insurance, payment processing company fees, advertising fees. But I'm sure you could pull it off by getting your "bunch of friends" to meet you at the lake!

DMC707

still use 'em. The way the cleat slots into the pedal on that particular one, you dont necessarilly need the clip to retain them -- but these were still widely used until recently -- now there are devices to affix straps to clipless pedals also --

A loooong time ago when i first started riding track i found out the hard way -- i pulled up so hard i snapped the LOOK red cleat i was using - thankfully was right off the gun -- if i had been turning some rpm's, it could have been gruesome

chip.hedler

More about pedaling form: The European veterans who used to put us young 'uns in our place on those century rides in the Cleveland area used to urge us to develop "souplesse" -- the smooth flow of energy from your body to the bicycle. Here are some articles that deal with pedaling form. Just for fun, the last link demonstrates that anything can be turned into a brand name to monetize it.

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/l...d-watts-454352

https://cyclingtips.com/2009/05/effi...troke-ankling/ --cool animation!

https://www.theendurancelab.co.za/po...-to-train-them

https://www.bicycling.co.za/training...-pedal-stroke/

https://www.cyclist.co.uk/news/1373/...fect-pedalling

https://www.souplesse-cycling.com in case you want to see what they offer...

repechage

Toe clips and straps or spd's. with spd's I run the pedals that have a no engaging side also. every once in a while with a technical single track, the ability to move the foot off the pedal to maintain staying upright is worthwhile.
Rare. With toe clips and straps, running one side loose for the same reason works well, when the road ahead is clear, cinch up. On the flat and especially on a climb I apply force to keep the forward momentum by muscle memory. With load sensor pedals I am sure it could be mapped, the useful force application would not be constant around the arc of rotation ( the muscle groups employed are not equal) but when I am on my 3 speed Roadster, I am at a disadvantage compared to a bike with foot retention.

beng1

I ride without all that garbage every day, no helmet, no cell phone. the social gathering that events are is the "award", no timing equipment is necessary to see who comes home first, second, third. There are multiple rides and other events organized in my city, and every city in the USA every week using nothing more than social-media. If someone can not do anything with all that establishment infrastructure crap and technology you have to feel sorry for them, they are not free and will probably die that way......

chip.hedler

Are you including helmets in "all that garbage?" I know too many folks that have suffered long-lasting effects of accidental blows to the head to feel safe myself without a helmet. And there seems to be more belligerence from drivers these days -- lockdown-induced road rage? You evidently are frequently out on the road riding at more than a casual pace (as in, passing cars on your circuit), so there is definitely a meaningful level of risk. You seem very accepting of things about your equipment that others might prefer not to experience, so a helmet should be pretty easy to put up with for the protection you'd gain.

smd4

Well, that certainly explains a lot.

Road Fan

Seems to me the foot tends to stay on the pedal when it is moving synchronized with the path of the pedal. I think this is part of rider skill. The down force should hold the foot on the pedal during the downstroke. I tend to pull back on the backstroke, pointing my toe down to prevent my foot flying off, so a little bit of force there. On the upstroke I'm not sure what I do, because I'm feeling the next downstroke on the other pedal. I tend to lift my knee a bit during TDC to make it smooth before the next thrust, but honestly, this sort of self-training is hard to maintain if you are not a regular, which i am not anymore. Mainly I try to do these things to feel smooth. I guess if I feel smooth it must be better, right (maybe?)?

Another thought about pedaling: The best I can come up with about the upstroke is that my foot stays on the pedal because of long habit, but I think it was built based on feedback to my foot based on pressure between my foot and the pedal. I must be applying some net downforce on the pedal during the upstroke, which has to be some impediment to the net drive torque, averaged over a full crankset revolution, with a flat pedal. I usually use toe clips and straps fastened lightly, so this type of foot attachment can give me feedback based on foot down pressure OR based on the pressure of the top of my foot against the strap. I always want to get my foot out instantly when necessary, so I don’t use a hard shoe cleat or a tight strap. The toe clip also provides lateral pressure to my foot if it wanders off the center of the pedal, so some “foot training” results in the lifting and sideways potential foot motions, relative to the moving pedal.

Same things would happen wearing modern cycling shoes and cleats which are bound to the pedal, with or without a floating attachment. More force can be transferred than with a toe clip and strap arrangement. However, my hypothesis FWIW is that the tactile feedback resulting from the pedal and strap touching my foot is what makes me keep my feet on the pedals with pretty good reliability.

bamboobike4

Superman meets Albert Camus meets Evel Knievel.

DMC707

one legged drills are very common at any track training camp. When I was “relevant” in that sport, the strategies involved smaller gears - (90 to 100 gear inches max) and being able to turn at 160 rpm (or even more on rollers with smaller gears) -

now the current trends involve huge gears at substantially less rpm, but with the force involved, foot retention is as important as the upstroke. Some of the elite men are knocking on the door of 3000 watts




Regarding racing MTB’s. the only place you’ll see flat pedals in MTB’s is in gravity work (Enduro or downhill) - and it’s not common. Even BMX riders are almost universally using clipless pedals now

As for me? Well - now i look at riding my mountain bike as a leisure activity for the most part as opposed to training - I just put on a pair of floppy soled Vans type shoes (zero support and zero performance) and hit the trails. It’s no muss no fuss for me. I just pop the bike off the rack and I’m riding within 30 seconds. And that’s the only reason I ride flats at times — convenience

i still carry a cat 2 license - and I don’t mean that as a humble-brag or anything- i quite literally am grandfathered in and am too stubborn/prideful to downgrade — but I have done the occasional downhill race at that level - but when the time comes to make things count , I use clipless pedals.

if my foot comes off the crank , I want it to be a deliberate act.

So in short, In XC , maximizing the upstroke is still a viable issue, but downhill, it’s more about foot retention- Slipping a pedal at those speeds can be painful

DMC707

yes - this thread, while not as charged as the discussions sometimes get over in P&R , is still quite breathtaking

smd4

If it's so easy to set up a triathlon without an entry fee, then why don't you, and quit *****ing about the $50 bucks the "criminals" charge?

beng1

I don't know when helmets became popular for recreational bike riding, but it was not in the 60s or 70s when I was growing up and riding my stingray and ten-speed, and I doubt it was even popular in the 80s. In my state harley riders almost never use helmets, and statistically the most deaths in auto accidents are those caused by head injuries, but you never see people wearing helmets while driving themselves to work in the morning, so it is largely a double-standard to shame bicyclists about not wearing a helmet when they ride. My wife crashed a bicycle and fractured her skull, broke her pelvis and had a brain hemmorage, took her a long time to recover, but she was simply a very bad bicycle rider and did not belong on one in the first place IMHO, I mean she was a BAD rider. I know I am not a stunt-man or the best on two wheels there is, but when we were kids we used to build ramps with boards and concrete blocks and jump our bikes over them with no landing ramps, just hitting the flat earth, and even broke the frames on our bikes when we landed, and some of us got hurt, but we never ended up in the hospital hardly ever. We even had a game where we would ride in a group and the object was to cut across someone's front wheel or kick it sideways and wipe them out. We did a lot of dangerous things every day and it was wonderful. I crashed my ten-speed and bounced my head off the road and had amnesia for a while, and all my parents did was have me sit in a chair until I remembered where I was and I went on with life. That is why people riding bikes around looking like spacemen taxiing jet-liners at an airport appear very funny to me, and sad too. If you spend your entire life worrying about breaking a bone or dying, are you ever actually alive??? Maybe living with a congenital heart defect most of my life, knowing I could just fall over dead any day as a few of my first cousins did at young ages gave me a different outlook than most people about life. life is very short no matter if you live to be 50 or 100. I have friends who are 90 I worked with when they were younger than I am now, I remember my parents when they were in their 20s, and it all seems to have happened in the last week or so. I have crashed heavily a few times in the last year and rode home both times, once with a lump on my elbow as big as a softball, once with a partially torn ACL, all it did was remind me of my youth and make me feel alive and young again. Whether the ride is over tomorrow or in 30 years, it will be the snap of a finger, it has actually already happened.

chip.hedler

Well, bicyclists are not surrounded by metal shells that are mostly roll-proof, glass that doesn't shatter into thousands of dagger-like shards, and bicyclists don't have seat belts. I'll bet a high proportion of head injuries in auto accidents come when people are not using the seat belts most states require (probably including yours). I hope you don't think seat belts are garbage.

My early recreational biking wasn't that different than yours--we tried all kinds of crazy stunts, and raced around the woods on dirt trails that long preceded what is called single-track. And I, too, had a headbanger: a bunch of us also flew gas-powered control-line model airplanes on a field next to the plant where they used to make Jeeps. The field was down a long steep grassy embankment from the road and there was a steel cable on two-foot high posts to keep bystanders from wandering into the path of a propeller turning at 10,000 rpm. Hey, look! Someone's already getting started! I'm going to ride down the hill and see what they've got! Riding down the hill? No problem. Avoiding the cable? Didn't happen! I was ambulatory but totally out of it and my friends walked me home. I think I was like a zombie for about 3 days and then snapped out of it with no recollection of the accident or the 3 days in la-la land. Lucky it wasn't worse. Of course, back then the idea of preventing such an injury by wearing a helmet was on nobody's radar at all. Major league baseballers didn't wear helmets when they were up to bat, pro football players didn't have face guards, and nobody but race car drivers and people in airplanes had seat belts.

I think everybody assumed that most stories had happy endings, so why worry?

I don't feel that Pollyanna-ish now, and there are lots of people counting on me to be physically, mentally, and emotionally there for them. I don't want the lack of the small imposition of wearing a helmet to coincide with someone's careless behavior of some kind with a motor vehicle resulting in my inability to carry out personal commitments that mean at least as much to me as the pleasures of bicycling. I'll bet many cyclists feel the same way, and so do most people who buckle up. It's not just all about Big Brother and "Click it, or ticket!"

SurferRosa

​​​​​​I'll give you Evel.

Camus had great intelligence and excellent taste.

kermie

To the OP, I understand what you are saying about helmets, safety and your thoughts on them. I don't agree, but it is your right to believe. In 1993 I was run down from behind while on a training ride BY A GMC 2500. Broke my back, broken knee caps pulled muscles etc. But my Giro helmet saved my life, so I don't buy into " I never had to use one growing up." I am around your age it appears, and yes, we did crazy things back them with no protection, along with riding in cars or trucks with no seatbelts. Doesn't make it right. I am glad to be here today, though an inch shorter due to the broken back. So every bicycle ride, motorcycle ride, I wear the protection. Oh and I do laugh at folks on their Huffys trying to race me

DMC707

I never felt more alive than when i stubbed my toe on the metal corner of the bed at 4AM on the way to the bathroom either

chip.hedler

All right, fellow Freds and Friedas, who would your money be on for this matchup? (Apologies to any who might take umbrage, I'm still Cat 5 in the snark competition)

bamboobike4

Hmm...

Yeah, I'm gonna have to amend that...

bamboobike4

What began as a thread on position has moved into supposition.
It's a semantic masterpiece!

repechage

On the verge of Troll-Landia

JulesCW 

I can see it now... the Walter Mitty Lakeside Triathlon and Time Trial World Championships...