Cycling 101 Tips: #1 Your Feet

Cleat Positioning:
Do you have a sore Achilles, knee problems or experience numbness/hot spots on your feet while riding? It might have something to do with your cleat/foot position.

Basic Cleat setup (fore-aft): First find the ball of your foot. some find it by the protrusion at on this inside of you foot. You can also find this by standing up on your toes and the last part to leave the floor is the ball of your foot. This is your neutral position, it's the defacto starting position.

The concept is that while your crank arm is level to the ground that your forward facing foot has the ball of your foot directly over the centre of the pedal axle. This is the starting position and it works for a lot of people.

Riders that ride super long distances like to place the ball of their foot 1/4 inch forward of this to alleviate pressure. So much that there are cases where people have placed the cleat at the dead middle of their shoe by drilling new cleat holes into their carbon soles!

Triathletes and sprinters like their cleat position such that it places the ball of their foot forward of the pedal.

Side-to-side (float): most MTB pedals have some degree of float in them. Road pedals do not usually have much. This can have serious impact no your knees. But basic setup dictates that you want to ensure that you have ankle clearance from the crank arms (because it would hurt otherwise). So you should be trying to position them such that they are not floating to extremes or you will create premature cleat wear (and at $15 a set it's no fun).

This should be done while on a trainer or being held up by someone this will ensure proper positioning.

Note that changing cleat position can also affect your saddle height requirements.

REMEMBER: to make a note of the cleat position for when you next replace the cleat.