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During a very muddy and slidey ride with a mate yesterday I hit upon a brilliant idea.
Both of us were riding with flat pedals, I had superstar nanos and my mate had V12s and both were wearing 5-10 shoes of one sort or another. Grip between shoe and pedal was excellent but every time we put our feet down we'd slide around like Bambi on ice.
My brilliant idea is to have 5-10 rubber covered pedals and spiky shoes. These would grip to both the pedals and the muddy ground.
Why has nobody done this?
Would it work?
Both of us were riding with flat pedals
Yeah that's where you are going wrong
Pretty sure it's been done.
my shimano spd winter boots have football boot studs in the soles
April foooooools
Wouldn’t it be easier to have the studs in the ground and the ice on your feet? Would mean we don’t have to throw away some perfectly good pedals at least.
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martymac
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Wouldn’t it be easier to have the studs in the ground and the ice on your feet? Would mean we don’t have to throw away some perfectly good pedals at least.
Now that is a brilliant idea
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I think you're on to something there. Once you had settled on your shoe design, you could design the pedal so it fitted exactly to the pattern of studs and so on on your shoe. Maybe you could put special hook-like features on the studs so they meshed with the pedal shape to give better grip.
Why has nobody done this?
Coffee shop managers complain if you walk around on their nice polished floors in spiky shoes.
Velcro pedal / shoe interface!
Assuming it’s not an April Fool windup, yep - spiky soles shoes only work well on soft ground. As soon as you’re on a hard surface you’re damaging both the shoe and the surface as well as having suddenly lost the grip you set out to gain.
IMO the ultimate solution would be a pair of light but strong hiking boots along the general lines of my favourite old Scarpa Baltoro but with a patch of dotty 5/10 stealth between the toe and instep. Weight would be the biggest problem I think.
Running spikes and toe-straps?
What are you putting your foot down for? Practise some balancing skills!