(metallic whooshing)
(hypnotic EDM music)
- Three, two, one, up, up, up,
up, up, up, up, up, up!
What is the best upgrade you can make to your bike?
Now, some people would say
making the transition from flat pedals to clipless.
- Clipless is a confusing name
because you do, indeed, ride clipped in,
but the name comes from a time
when toe clips and straps,
the visible cage around your foot,
were the pedal of choice.
These new pedals didn't have a visible clip,
so therefore were known as clipless.
- [James] Yeah, now anyone who rides clipless pedals
will tell you they make you more efficient,
they make you faster,
and they allow you to have more control over your bike.
- But can you actually put out more pedals
with these pedals on?
Will you go faster?
Or do they even make any difference whatsoever?
Well, that's what we're going to find out.
To do so, we are going to tackle
one of the most incredible climbs in the world, twice.
Maybe not the whole climb though.
Once on the flat pedals
and once with our normal clipless pedals.
It sounds simple and it would be
were it not for the fact that the full climb
is Sa Calobra in Mallorca,
nine and a half kilometers in length
at an average gradient of 7%.
So instead of that,
we're going to reduce it to just three kilometers near the top.
Again, the average gradient is over 7%
If you want to find out what the benefits are supposed to be
from riding on clipless pedals,
all you need to do is a quick Google
and you'll find that the idea
is all about power transfer and efficiency.
Because your foot is physically attached to the pedal,
you're meant to be more efficient.
- Yeah, you can also transfer more power
because you're able to pull up and push down on the pedal,
making your pedal stroke more efficient.
But, Chris, this all sounds like rubbish
because the first one doesn't make any sense
and the second one is disproven.
- Yeah, and despite that being true,
you would absolutely never catch me riding a road bike
in a pair of flat pedals.
- Yeah, I'd have to wrestle them off you, wouldn't I?
- Well, my clips would, if I don't drop 'em first.
- We're going to be doing two runs.
Our first run's going to be on clipless pedals
with our Fizik carbon road shoes.
Now that should give us a good benchmark.
Now, our second run will be with trainers and flats.
- And it's at this point we should point out
the obvious difference between the two setups.
You see, cycling shoes are really stiff
and designed to be mega efficient.
But if you're riding on flats,
it's highly unlikely you would've already bought yourself
a set of cycling shoes and you therefore would probably have
quite a flexible pair of trainers.
- Yeah, a bit like this actually.
These trainers are designed for running and walking
and not designed to be putting power through a pedal.
- Right, let's talk about the tests.
To prevent our overly-competitive natures
coming into play, we're going to be doing them
in a time trial-specific fashion.
That means we'll only ever be riding one rider at at time.
- Yeah, but don't worry.
We're going to be doing max efforts
and we're not allowed to look at our data.
So, Chris, take off your Wahoo head unit.
- In the pocket.
- Chris and I have just ridden two thirds
of the way up this iconic climb, Sa Calobra,
and we're going to be racing the hardest bit of it
all the way up to there.
- Yep, the bridge at the top, or very close to the top.
There's a reason we've chosen only to do three Ks,
is we don't want to do two back-to-back
30-ish minute efforts
and have the accumulated fatigue of that.
That could skew the results somewhat.
But also I think it'd be more interesting
to do something that's a little bit of a halfway house
between the sprints they did last time
and the longer efforts that they did.
- [James] You ready for a max effort?
- As ready as I'll ever be, James.
- All right, you're going first.
- What, and have you chase me up the climb?
- Yes.
- Just give me three minutes.
There's nothing I hate more--
- I'll start you off.
(hypnotic EDM music)
Chris Opie, run number one with clipless pedals.
Three, two one, up, up, up,
up, up, up, up, up!
(relaxed EDM music)
Right, Chris should be a little bit a ways up now.
I'm going to start off myself.
Three, two, one.
I just hope I can clip in.
Right, clipped in, let's chase that fast sprinter!
(relaxed EDM music)
- That hurt, as you might've expected.
(panting) It's now time to head down,
change pedals, and go again.
Let's see if Hank can catch me.
(relaxed EDM music)
- Run number one done.
Let's now change pedals.
Whoo!
- Don't really want to put these pedals on my bike.
It just seems, I dunno.
I mean, what, they're worth less than an inner tube
and the bearings don't really turn,
so maybe just you could do the test.
- No, that's not fair.
After all, this is all for science.
- [Chris] All right, okay.
(quiet bluesy rock music)
- Right, Chris, how does it feel
to be wearing trainers on your Pinarello?
- It's really weird 'cause I don't know,
I mean, I don't know where to put my feet,
as in this shoe's definitely not made to ride a bike with.
- No, are you ready for this max three K effort?
- No, not really.
- Well, don't worry about that, mate, 'cause here you go.
You ready?
Three, two, one, and up!
Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up!
Looks slow.
(aggressive rock music)
Now, the good thing about having flats
is I don't have to worry about clipping in.
So here goes nothing.
Three, two, one, up! (grunting)
Slow start.
Oh, it's harder than I thought.
(aggressive rock music)
Whoo!
That was tough.
How do you feel?
- It was really weird
because every time you'd go to stand up,
you can't really pull up on the pedal
in the same way that you normally would.
It was actually easier to stay sat down
and turn a slightly bigger gear than normal.
- Right, how are we going to look at these results then?
- Well, we're going to need a laptop,
so we'll do that bit somewhere else,
and we'll enjoy the rest of our ride for now, I think.
- We've made it back to GCN HQ and all the results are in.
So Chris, are you ready to elaborate?
- I am.
So we chose that three kilometer section
at the top of Sa Calobra.
We'll start with clipless pedals first?
- Let's do it.
- We're used to riding them.
James, 367 watts, 78 revs per minute,
that's how fast his cadence was, 9:17 minutes.
- [James] Not bad.
- [Chris] Now I've been training a little bit.
I did manage to roll you here.
9:12 minutes but I did do a lot more watts
because I'm a lot heavier than you,
so it's 409 watts but a cadence of 73.
I tend to pedal slow, again, uphill.
I've noticed you always seem to look
like you're in an easier gear, getting a little bit faster.
So that was clipless.
Obviously, we're trained to ride in that sort of fashion.
We know what it's like to be clipped in.
- The flat's a bit alien, wasn't it?
- It was a bit.
It didn't feel quite the same.
Should we get the results first?
- Let's do it.
- [Chris] Right, 351 watts for you
at 70 RPM with a time of 9:42 minutes.
Putting seven seconds into me here,
because I did 9:47, 380 watts,
but my cadence dropped quite a lot.
And both of us lost a bit of cadence
but mine dropped more than yours, 62 RPM.
- So what was the conclusion?
I guess we're not losing a huge amount of time
but it's all really on feeling.
- Yeah, exactly.
You would stand up, or you'd try to stand up
to go out of the corners and accelerate
and try and pull on the pedals but you didn't have that,
so the bike felt sort of clumsy underneath you.
Now obviously, we're not used to riding without clips.
So that was quite alien to us, as you said before.
- Yeah, I mean, I rely on the upstroke of the pedal,
especially when I'm climbing,
so to have to kind of flip it and rely on the downstroke,
I just didn't feel like I could get
nowhere near the amount of power.
- No, you don't get that initial drag
through the bottom of the stroke, do you?
Actually, the power discrepancy, I think, isn't huge.
It's not even quite 10%, so that's actually in fact 5%,
so that's really not that bad at all.
But it was all about the sensation
and the feeling, wasn't it?
It just didn't feel like we were riding our bikes anymore.
- [James] No, but other than that,
I think, you know, they're not as big time gaps
as we thought they were going to be.
- So if you do have flats at home
and you don't really want to change,
then don't feel pressured into doing so.
- No, do what's comfortable, I guess.
If you enjoyed this video
and you enjoyed seeing us suffering up the Sa Calobra climb,
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