Originally Posted by davester

I'm a clipless skeptic. My pedal history is about 10 years of clips and straps with no cleats, followed by 25 years of clips and straps + cleats for racing and minus the cleats for touring/recreation, followed by 10 years of clipless (SPDs) followed by a switch back to clips and straps (road bikes) and flats (MTB) 5 years ago. The reason I switched back is that I could discern no advantage to using clipless as compared to using clips and straps (without cleats)/flats and some significant disadvantages (i.e. needing to wear clunky not-great-to-walk-in shoes and slow speed painful crashes on rock-strewn steep MTB trails due to the difficulty of unclipping quickly). The only downside to using clips and straps that I can discern is that your foot can get sore if you cinch down on the strap too tightly. The solution...don't do that. There have also been a number of studies published that show that there is no significant measurable efficiency advantage to clipless pedals. Many of those studies went in trying to show what type of advantage clipless had, only to come back with the opposite conclusion.