Finding Flow with Flat Pedals - MTB Skills
Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
Singletracks.com
4.7 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2024
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Carol Baldwin is the founder of Flownetic MTB Skills and is a PMBIA Level 3 certified mountain bike skills instructor. She's also a Singletracks contributor and product tester.
In this podcast we ask Carol:
- Have you alway mountain biked with flat pedals?
- Was it difficult to switch from clipless to flat pedals? Why?
- What are the advantages of flat pedals compared to clipless?
- What are the disadvantages of flats compared to clipless pedals?
- Are bigger and/or wider pedal platforms better?
- What's the right number of pins per side?
- What is your favorite shoe, or type of shoe for mountain biking?
- What is your favorite flat pedal?
- Are aluminum pedals better than composite?
- Are there certain types of rides that are better or worse for flat pedals?
- For people who have only used flats, is it worth giving clipless a try?
- Is riding on flats more fun?
Learn more and connect with Carol at flowneticmtb.com.
--Keep up with the latest in mountain biking at Singletracks.com and on Instagram @singletracks
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everybody. Welcome to the single tracks podcast. My name is Jeff, and today my guest is Carol Baldwin. |
| 0:06.9 | Carol is the founder of Flonetic Mountain Bike Skills, and she is a PMBA Level 3 certified |
| 0:13.9 | mountain bike skills instructor. She's also a single tracks contributor and product tester. |
| 0:19.8 | Thanks for joining me, Carol. |
| 0:21.7 | Yeah, thanks for having me. |
| 0:23.5 | So today we're going to be talking about mountain biking with flat pedals. |
| 0:27.5 | And I'm curious, have you, have you always mountain biked with flat pedals? |
| 0:31.4 | So I actually started on clip list. |
| 0:34.0 | Like I think most people did for back in the day when I was first getting started |
| 0:38.3 | with mountain biking. It's an interesting, it was always an interesting thing to me because it just |
| 0:42.5 | seemed like it kind of elevated the learning curve for like, you know, people getting new to |
| 0:46.7 | this whole off-road riding, having to suddenly have their feet attached to this contraption, |
| 0:51.3 | this two-wheeled contraption. They don't know how to get up and over obstacles. |
| 1:00.7 | But yeah, I think probably for the first, I think five or six years of my mountain bike experience, |
| 1:02.6 | I was riding clipped in. |
| 1:03.8 | Yeah. |
| 1:05.9 | Yeah, it is scary when you think about it. And especially when you first started, I know I remember being terrified and like, how does this work? Like, |
| 1:11.5 | I'm going to fall over. Like, what if I need to get off the bike quickly and I'm clipped in? |
| 1:16.9 | Yeah. Yeah, my, so the very, I think, you know, I probably did like a handful of rides using like |
| 1:22.7 | the, you know, like the cheap plastic pedals that come with the bike and hiking shoes. But I remember my very |
| 1:28.1 | first set of clipless shoes. I went and did a group ride with a friend and he invited me and he was all enthusiastic. And so I bought the shoes. I bought the pedals. I was so stoked. And I literally set the bike up in my apartment. I was leaning on the bar and I practiced clipping and unclipping like 50 times. And I was like, yeah, I've got this. |
| 1:44.5 | I get to the group ride, hop on my bike, roll on across the parking lot, being like, oh yeah, look at me. I'm so cool. I go to wave to the gang and be like, hey, y'all. And I couldn't unclip. And in front of this group of people I had never met, I couldn't unclip. and I just flopped over straight, like on my side, |
... |
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