After I got back from my trip to Las Vegas the other day I finally had a chance to try out the new cleats I bought for my cycling shoes. I use Speedplay X 5 pedals and have been pretty happy with them. Their best feature is that they’re fairly easy to clip in and out of. However in the past month or so I’d been popping out of them with my right foot. A scary thing if you’re going up a hill. When you use these pedals you are both pushing and pulling with your legs to get the bike to move. However after a twenty mile test ride the new cleats and regreasing the pedals seemed to fix the problem. So I put it through a real stress test yesterday: a 42 mile ride.

Up to now the fastest ride I went through was about 31 miles so this was a new personal best. I was quite tired at the end of the ride but the bicycle worked perfectly. My body maybe less so. It was probably a poor idea to not bring any granola bars or other food on the ride. By the end I was exhausted and out of fuel. Unlike the first three quarters I was mostly cruising through the last leg, but I made it. Besides feeling sore all over the impact of this ride was to reboot my sleep schedule. I easily fell asleep before midnight and then woke-up at 8 a.m. this morning. A big change from my recently typical wake-up between 9 and 10 a.m.

Also I have to give a shout out to Bicycles East in Glastonbury for replacing the cleats on my bicycle shoes. The old ones were fairly beat up and they took the time to extract them after I bought the new ones. I bought my road bicycle from them years ago and after a several year hiatus during law school they still remembered me. They seem to have the best selection of bicycles and accessories that I’ve seen at a shop. They also are rather knowledgable about all the products and bike problems. In an era where people could be getting creamed by online sites like Nashbar stores like Bicycles East win by competing on knowledge and customer service.