Was it cleat or pedal that was wrong?

Several months ago, I got new cleats on one of my pairs of cycling shoes. From the start, I had trouble with the left shoe.

It was hard to get the shoe clipped in; and it had a way of coming UN-clipped as I was riding. Early this week, I had the cleat re-adjusted for about the third time. At first, it seemed to be all right at last; but yesterday morning the shoe unexpectedly came out of the pedal as I was accelerating.

I took the shoes to the bike shop again. They said the cleats are all right; and in fact, I say they should be OK. They\’re only a few months old; and the bike shop said the pedal might be the problem. At the moment we couldn\’t check that, because I rode the hybrid to the shop.

The catch with the pedal theory was, my other pair of bike shoes doesn\’t have this problem! Why would one pair of shoes be OK; and the other one not? On top of that, the OK pair of shoes is the older pair! So, is it cleat or pedal?

Checking It Out

First thing today was a trip to the salvage store. They finally re-opened yesterday; and I heard that the store was packed with shoppers. That didn\’t surprise me; and I guess it\’s why the grab-bag bins didn\’t have much in them!

But I found canned chicken; and bought new condiments such as ranch dressing. I didn\’t dare keep what had been in the fridge prior to Ida; there\’s no sense taking chances with food poisoning. There were no protein bars in the grab-bag bins, but I found Think! bars; a box of 10 for $7.99! I got some to use as ride food, because I was running low on such items.

After I got my groceries home, I headed for the bike shop to see to that cleat or pedal question. I wore the non-problematic pair of shoes; and brought the other pair along in my backpack. At the shop, I told them that the shoes I was wearing weren\’t causing trouble.

It turns out that something on the pedal had a bit too much \”play\” it; and I also got new cleats for the \”bad\” shoes. Now things seem better. When it comes to cleat or pedal, I\’d far rather have to buy new cleats. They cost less than pedals!