Road vs MTB pedals

boyse7en

I'm riding a Specialized Tricross Sport, but only on the road. I do about 40-50 miles per week, all on very hilly terrain (I live in North Devon!)

It's currently got Shimano SPD pedals fitted, which I swapped over from my mountain bike. Are there any advantages in swapping pedals/shoes to a road-type clipless system, or is there not really much difference between performance?

t4tomo

not much difference, except aesthetics. Biggest difference /gain is from changing from flat pedals to some sort of clipped system.

markhewitt1978

There's the advantage that there's a bigger area to push down upon so in theory slightly more efficient. The trade off being that the shoes are really difficult to walk in. I'd say if you want to do any walking off the bike without changing shoes, stick to the SPD.

iPete

If SPD are comfy, I'd stick.

The only reason I went to SL was the wider availability of stiffer shoes for racing. I'm temtped to get some Bont XC SPDs and go back. I'm not sure where people get the notion that they are more efficient or give more power...

slowbike

markhewitt1978 wrote:

There's the advantage that there's a bigger area to push down upon so in theory slightly more efficient.

Bolx! So long as you have stiff soled shoes there is no difference.

simon_masterson

Loads of advantages... abysmal cleat life is the obvious one. If I had to buy again then it would be the best shoes I could afford; whichever of the two systems. Ideally I'd be spending enough to get some good quality MTB racing/CX shoes; aside from the greater power transfer/efficiency nonsense, I don't know why (some) road cyclists seem to think that they are the only ones who want stiff shoes.