Speedplay

Went from Keos to Zeros on my roadie. And went from Shimano MTB SPDs to Frogs on everything else. Solved my knee problems.

Huge fan of the frogs (for non-roadie bikes). The easiest clip in and out of any pedal I’ve used. Doesn’t have all the screws and overengineering of other Speedplay. Very simple design. Great for off-road and using with MTB shoes. Only problem I’ve found is that the cleats wear out faster than other pedals I’ve used. That and the price.

As for float, you feel a tiny bit but not all that much resistance in the Zeros. Way less than Keos. Your foot can basically shift around left and right on its own as necessary. But the Frogs are way less friction - it’s basically zero resistance in moving the foot around. So I find it even better on the knees than Zeros. But it takes some getting used to - feels a bit sketchy at the start. I also find I can’t use those always-on cleat covers thingos with the Zeros because it increases the float tension too much and makes my knees uncomfortable - maybe so keep that in mind.

Also, there isn’t any unclipping tension in the Frogs (you just move your foot enough so that the cleat literally slides off), so you can feel like you might lose the pedal when you first try them. In that respect the Zeros feel much more confident. You can move the foot freely but with no concern of accidentally unclipping.

Finally, Zeros are shit for anything offroad. I did a bit of soft dirt on my roadie recently and filled my cleat with mud and made it impossible to unclip. Literally impossible. I had cleaned the mud out, but it still seized up the moving parts of the cleat. I had to fall off my bike and then take my shoes off leaving them attached to the pedal. Was very annoying on this ride because I had to jump off to get across creeks and each time I had to fall off into a soft bush to get off the bike! Was like that until I got home and took the whole cleat apart to clean it.

To start with the float is very disconcerting, but you do get used to it. A lot of it is also finding exactly how much you need and dialling that in. As others have said, the ability to have it start/finish where you like and it’s also non centring which is what I love most about it.

On my first ride with Speedplay LA’s the non-centring float felt really dicey. Like it was going to unclip each pedal stroke.

Second ride and actually putting power through the pedal, it felt a lot better. Just need to shift the cleats outward so my foot sits more towards the cranks. If the range of float feels too wide (it kinda does already) I think I can drive a screw into the LA cleats to control that direction.

If all else fails, then it’ll be Zero cleats on LA pedals (which SP says don’t work, but anec-data says otherwise).