Why I Ride Speedplay

For my road bike, my pedals of choice are Wahoo Speedplay. They have been since 2012.

And I get asked about them constantly. On Instagram, at café stops, at the roadside, when someone catches sight of pedals that look like magnets. So I wrote this up four years ago, mostly so I could stop explaining it in person.

But I’ve been rewriting it because a lot of what I said in 2022 got outdated. The specific Speedplay pedals I've been riding have changed, and so has some of what I thought I knew about them.

HOW I ENDED UP ON SPEEDPLAY

A Flemish bike fitter talked me into it in 2012. I didn't argue. I'd been on Look, then Shimano SPD-SL. He made a case for Speedplay that was so certain and so specific that I didn't even ask a follow-up question. I took the man at his word and switched.

Ever since that switch, I've worked with three other fitters. Three, over fourteen years, in different studios with different methods. Not one of them ever suggested I change pedals. It never came up. They all understood immediately why the system was on my feet and got on with the rest of the fit.

And believe me, fitters are not sentimental about equipment. If a pedal is making their job harder, they'll tell you. Three of them, independently, treating the choice as settled. I have nothing to add to that.

What makes Speedplay different

The mechanism is in the cleat, not the pedal. That's the whole thing.

Every other road system on the market puts the retention mechanism in the pedal. Look invented that approach in the 1980s by borrowing it from a ski binding, and Shimano, Time and Favero are all still working variations on the same idea. The cleat under your shoe is a lump of plastic that gets clamped.

Speedplay reversed that. The spring, the trap, the moving parts. All of it is in the cleat. The pedal is only a flat disc.

That flat disc has no front nose to catch on tarmac, so you get more cornering clearance. No top and no bottom. So you clip in on either side. Very little material between your sole and the axle, so you get a low stack. And it's mostly spindle, so it's light.

One consequence is that the precision component is the part you stand on in car parks and at coffee stops. I will explain more about that in the maintenance section later.

About free float

Systems like Shimano give you float that springs back towards centre. Speedplay gives you float with nothing pushing back at all. That is an important distinction that almost nobody explains properly.

When cyclists compare float, they compare a feeling. Or numbers. Six degrees on the yellow Shimano cleats. Four and a half on the blue. Up to fifteen on a Speedplay. The numbers make it look like the same thing in different quantities. But it's not. On a Shimano cleat, your foot can rotate, but the mechanism is constantly asking it to return to the middle. On a Speedplay, nothing asks. Your foot sits where your leg has decided it wants to sit, rotating freely inside a window you set yourself.

Six degrees of centring float and six degrees of free float are barely the same category. One is a leash. The other is a room.

The sensation is hard to describe until you've felt it. Your feet feel like they're twisting on ice. Almost no resistance at all. Let me be honest. The first few rides, it's genuinely unsettling. But then it becomes normal, and going back to a sprung cleat feels like someone has their hand on your heel.

adjusting the float screws

There are two small Phillips screws on the side of each cleat. Float limiter stops. Each one governs one direction. Roughly 7.5 degrees per side, 15 degrees in total, adjustable anywhere down to zero.

So, what they set is where your float runs out before the release happens. Increase the float range and the outward release angle increases with it. Decrease the float and the release comes sooner. The two are tied together.

Which sounds like a limitation until you notice that the two sides are set independently of each other.

A Shimano cleat cannot do this. Its float window is symmetric and springs back to centre, so both directions get the same treatment whether your leg wants it or not. Nobody is symmetrical. Leg length differs, tibial torsion differs, so does the ankle you rolled at nineteen and never had looked at. A system that forces both feet into a mirrored window is fighting one of your legs, quietly, for four hours at a time.

Release tension is a separate question. There is no screw for it. What you get instead is a choice of cleat. The Standard Tension cleat uses a firmer spring and feels more locked in under hard efforts. The Easy Tension cleat uses a lighter one and takes noticeably less force to clip in and out.

I have been on Standard for fourteen years, which tells you where my preference sits, but I only learned the alternative existed while rewriting this.

Spindle length and cleat tension

The thing about spindle length is worth knowing about, even though I can't speak to it from experience. The Speedplay Zero comes in four spindle lengths: 53, 56, 59 and 65 mm. Every other road pedal gives you one Q-factor and assumes your hips will agree with it. When they don't, the traditional fix is stacking washers behind the pedal, which is a bodge with a fatigue limit attached. Speedplay solves it with the right part instead.

The other thing is cleat tension. New cleats are stiff. Releasing feels harder than it should, and this is the single most common reason I hear for people giving up on Speedplay in the first fortnight. Which is a shame, because it resolves itself. The cleats wear in and the release gets smoother. Everyone I have told this to has come back and confirmed it. So if you are two weeks in and frustrated, that is the thing to know.

If waiting it out doesn't appeal, the Easy Tension cleat is always an option.

Do Speedplay pedals fix knee pain?

Probably not on their own. No pedal fixes a knee by itself, and I would be sceptical of anything that promises it will.

But the mechanism and the research behind it hold up. So let me separate what is proven from what is plausible, because this is where a lot of commercial cycling writing usually goes wrong.

What is measured is a study published in the Journal of Applied Biomechanics in 1995 that measured the rotational moment at the shoe and pedal interface across fixed and floating systems. Fixed clipless pedals produced the largest moments. Floating pedals reduced them significantly, without costing any power. Cyclists who already had knee pain showed clearly different loading patterns from those who didn't.

What is not proven is that more float is better than some float. A systematic review published in 2018 was careful about this point. The theory says extra float should reduce rotational load at the knee. The prospective study showing it actually reduces pain hasn't been run.

So the claim I'll defend is the narrow one. Free float lets your foot find its own path instead of negotiating with a spring. And the reduction in rotational load at the pedal has been measured. Whether that translates to your knee, over your kilometres, is a question only a fit can answer.

So, no, the pedal is not the fix. But it's the piece of equipment that gives a good fitter the most room to work with.

Does Speedplay's low stack height make you faster?

Stack height changes your effective saddle height. That's the practical consequence worth knowing before you switch, and it's more useful than most of what gets written about it.

When I first switched from Shimano, we dropped my saddle. When I later moved to Speedplay native four-hole soles on Lake shoes, we dropped it again as I didn't need the adapter plate. Since then I've ridden Udog, Fizik, S-Works and now Cadomotus, all with the adapter plate.

What follows from a lower stack is a lower riding position, which has its own consequences. But stack height alone doesn't create magical watts of course. The number to care about is the saddle height that follows from your choice.

How do you clip in to Speedplay pedals?

Like with any other pedal, at the bottom of the stroke. Six o'clock. Doing that will save you some frustration.

But yes, the first week of riding Speedplay is awkward. Everyone finds it awkward. You will feel like a beginner in front of a queue of traffic.

As I said earlier on, the cleats just need to wear in. The side you always unclip at traffic lights will feel easier at first. The other one takes a bit longer. Trust me. Give it time.

Two-sided entry is the daily pleasure of riding Speedplay on the road. Most cyclists who've spent time on SPD pedals already know this feeling. No wrong side, no flipping, no thinking about it. Take that same freedom and bring it to a road bike. That's what Speedplay gives you, and it's the highest compliment you can pay a component.

Last but not least, clipping out is easy. Move your heel outward until it unclicks. And I can add something most reviews don't mention. I've crashed on these more than I would like to admit. They always let my feet go without a problem.

How long do Speedplay cleats last?

One set per season for me. That is roughly 15.000 km, and I have had exactly one spring failure in 14 years.

My maintenance routine is simple. Once a month, I put a bit of chain wax on the cleat springs, using a multitool as leverage to work the springs in both directions so the lube gets where it needs to be. Dry lube works too.

That is the entire routine and it takes two minutes.

Now, the wear signal is worth mentioning specifically. You will notice that the spring gets less flexible and you feel it on the way out. Clipping out stops being smooth. That is my cue to add wax. If the wax doesn't fix it, I check the spring by hand with a screwdriver to see whether it is still genuinely springing.

The one failure I've had was fully telegraphed. The cleats were visibly worn, the click had gone soft, and I ignored it. The spring broke mid-ride. I rode home with my foot resting in the pedal rather than clipped to it, which was awkward but not dangerous as long as I kept myself in the saddle. But well, I should have replaced them a few weeks earlier.

Here in the Netherlands, new cleats cost around €49.95 a set. Set that against a pedal that has been faultless for years, and that is a running cost I am entirely relaxed about.

when Wahoo bought Speedplay

When Wahoo acquired Speedplay, they dropped the Zero Nanogram, the Zero Pavé and the Syzr mountain pedal in their 2021 relaunch. The X-series and the Frog went later. Cyclists who had spent years and several pairs of shoes committed to those systems were left buying old stock on eBay. If you search for why Wahoo discontinued the Frog, you will find people who have not forgiven it. That resentment is still alive.

But in all fairness, the range Wahoo inherited was famously confusing. Simplifying it was the stated plan from the day they bought the company. They cut the periphery and kept the core. And then spent several years developing a power meter version of it and did that well.

So, the current range is now is not only good, but also properly supported. Still, what I’ve mentioned is a reason to be clear-eyed about. Speedplay is a system with one supplier. And that supplier has already shown it can retire a line.

On the cleat quality question, which comes up constantly on forums online, I want to be careful. Long-term Speedplay users report springs breaking within a season on the Wahoo generation. I cannot tell those people they are wrong. I can only tell you what happened to me. I rode pre-Wahoo Speedplay for seven years and Wahoo-era Speedplay for six. Same guy, same legs, same wax routine. I have noticed no difference in how long a set of cleats lasts. But well, that is one cyclist's experience. Not a study. But in my genuine opinion this is a longer continuous run on both generations than most of the people arguing about it online.

To me, the Wahoo relaunch fixed real things. Like sealed bearings that need far less attention.

And as with their other products, Wahoo's support has been excellent. My earlier set of single-sided POWRLINK pedals developed a tiny bit of slack in the non-drive pedal. I opened a ticket, had replacements within days, and sent the old ones back. No arguments, no negotiation. Which puts the record at one faulty pedal in four years across two sets, replaced within a week. I can live with that.

The POWRLINK, four years in

I've been on Speedplay power meter pedals since they launched. The single-sided first, the dual-sided since January.

They arrived years later than promised. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But they arrived, and four years in, they are the pedal I would buy without hesitation.

The single-sided version did what I needed but as I never had ridden a double-sided powermeter I was just very curiuous to compare the data of left and right. So, since January I've been on the double-sided pair and I’m still enjoying comparing those numbers although luckily enough it didn’t provide me any shocking feedback.

The honest trade-off is that the POWRLINK sits higher and wider than a standard Zero. At 13 mm stack and 55 mm Q-factor.

Charging is via a magnetic clip that attaches to the power pod on each pedal, connected to a standard USB-C cable. In principle, it is simple. In practice, the magnetic connector can be fiddly, and I sometimes need to wiggle it into position before the light confirms a connection. With 75 hours claimed, though, this is something I do about once a month with my riding volume. A very small annoyance on a rare task rather than something I think about.

Cost here in the Netherlands is €419.95 for the single-sided set and €599.95 for the double-sided set.

Sand and dirt are the downside

That is the argument against this system. And there is no getting around it.

Get grit into the cleat mechanism and it stops working smoothly. Get enough in and it stops working at all. You will stand at the roadside stabbing at a pedal that will not accept your shoe. The fix is to take the shoe off, clean the cleat out properly and lubricate it again. Not ideal at kilometre 140.

For me this is not a theoretical problem. It happens when I stop for a sanitary break on a verge. It happens when I get off the bike to take pictures. Three steps into something soft and the system has an opinion about it. But I learned this along the way.

This is one of the reasons why I don't ride them in winter. Dutch winter roads have dirt on everything, and the chance of putting a foot down somewhere unpleasant is too high. So, my winter bike gets Shimano SPD and gravel shoes, which are warmer anyway.

If you ride gravel or through mud regularly, this is not your pedal. That is not a nitpick. It is a category boundary.

So, should you ride Speedplay?

Not everyone should. It depends.

Probably yes if you have a knee that starts talking to you after a few hours and a fitter has drawn arrows on a photograph of you from behind. Mainly if your two legs want different things. Also, if you ride serious volume and the interface between you and the bike has become a detail you can’t ignore. Take the fiddly cleat, the monthly wax and the annual replacement as the cost of the only road system that lets you set your feet where your legs want them.

Probably not if you ride gravel or mixed surfaces regularly, if you ride through winter on one bike, or if you've never had a fit-related complaint in your life. A set of Shimanos will serve you well. There is no shame in that, and I would never tell someone to switch just because I love mine.

That is probably the fairest summary of Speedplay I can offer. It is a deeper piece of equipment than most of the people riding it realise. It asks more of you than a Shimano does. And after fourteen years I am still finding things in it.

Oh, and they look exceptionally good on your bike too.