Honest Cycling Gear Reviews for UK Riders
You can spend £3,000 on wheels and still lose the plot because of a 160-gram wedge of foam. Road racing saddles quietly decide whether you stay tucked and fast for three hours or spend the last hour wriggling like you’re sat on a bag of marbles. Nobody mentions this in the bike shop: a saddle … Read more
Picture mile 40 of a lovely Sunday ride. The sun’s out, your legs feel good, the playlist is on a roll. Then a pins-and-needles fizz creeps in somewhere it really shouldn’t. Welcome to the club nobody wants to join. The good news is that choosing the right saddle for numbness cycling is one of the … Read more
Ask a room full of cyclists what ruins a long ride and you’ll hear the same groan: the saddle. Road bike saddles are the one component that carries your weight for hours on end, so a bad match turns a glorious 60-miler into a fidgety, wince-inducing slog. Get it right, though, and you forget the … Read more
Most riders spend weeks agonising over wheels, then bolt a £20 piece of plastic to their shoes and forget about it. That plastic is the only thing between your legs and the pedals. Every watt you make passes through it, so it deserves more thought than it usually gets. That is why Look Keo cleats … Read more
A clipless pedal system is only as good as the two small plastic wedges bolted to the bottom of your shoes, and for road riders on a Look-compatible setup, that means the cleat is doing more work than the pedal gets credit for. The best Look Keo cleats aren’t just a spare part you replace … Read more
Your knee doesn’t care how expensive your carbon frame is. It cares about one small, unglamorous plastic triangle bolted to the bottom of your shoe — and if that triangle is fighting your natural pedal stroke, you’ll know about it by mile twenty. SPD-SL cleats for knee comfort are simply the versions of Shimano’s road … Read more
There’s a particular kind of embarrassment reserved for cyclists who topple sideways at traffic lights, one foot still glued to the pedal, dignity scattering across the tarmac like loose gravel. Nine times out of ten, that’s not a skill problem. It’s a cleat problem. SPD-SL cleats are the small, unassuming plastic wedges that bolt to … Read more
Somewhere between the third red light and the fourth pothole, you realise your cleats are doing more work than your legs. SPD cleats for commuting are the small, unglamorous metal wedges bolted to the sole of your shoe that lock your foot to the pedal — and unlock again, ideally without drama, the second your … Read more
Cleats are the smallest, cheapest part of a clipless setup. They also decide whether you glide away from the traffic lights or topple sideways into a hedge. Choosing the best SPD cleats isn’t about chasing a badge. It’s about matching a release style, an amount of float and a walking profile to how you actually … Read more
Here’s an uncomfortable truth nobody tells you when you buy your first pair of clipless pedals: the cleats, not the pedals, are usually where knee pain starts. You can spend £300 on a beautiful carbon-bodied pedal system and still hobble off the bike wincing, because a fixed-float cleat has been quietly twisting your kneecap sideways … Read more