When I first started riding a fixed gear I did some reading on the subject over at Sheldon Brown’s site. Most of what I read wasn’t to surprising, however his take on pedals was pretty interesting to me:

Sometimes, novice fixed-gear riders will try to use plain pedals with no form of retention system. I strongly advise against this. Riding fixed with plain pedals is an advanced fixed gear skill, only recommended for experienced fixed-gear riders.

Since the pedals on the 925 come with the toe clips I just stuck with those and have gotten pretty used to them. But in the back of my mind I kept wondering why Mr. Brown would “strongly advise against” riding flat pedals. I started out on mountain biking with flat pedals and still ride around on them occasionally. What’s the big deal?

I found out yesterday.

I’m stuck on the road with the cars for most of my commute and I was waiting at a stop light yesterday to turn left and once I took off I didn’t have a chance to get my foot in the toe clip. The road was slightly downhill so I was able to pick up speed quickly. Once I got going pretty fast was when my left foot slipped off the pedal because I didn’t have it in the toe clip.

At this point I start doing a minor freak out as the reasoning behind Sheldon’s advice suddenly became very clear. I was thinking the danger in riding without clips was the pedaling uphill part. Nope. It’s the going really fast and having your feet come off the pedals and then not being able to get them back on because the pedals are moving way to fast part.

So I’m flying down the road with my pedals spinning wildly and there’s traffic behind me so I just lift up my legs, slow down a bit (yes I have brakes) and jump onto the sidewalk were I could safely gain control.

So the fixed’s first shot at taking my life was thwarted and I learned a valuable lesson. I’ll be sticking with the toe clips for awhile.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Crooked. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.