Put on my Time pedals yesterday and found that clipping out was much, much harder than I would have thought!
It wasn't the release tension. That comes from the factory at the lowest setting. I had to kick my heel
way-out to get to release. It also required a lot of speed while moving my heel out. When I was unclipping the noise from the release was really loud. You certainly know when releases!
The instructions said to cycle each side of both pedals 20 times before riding. I did that and a lot more. The pedals eased up some and I got a bit better at the technique, but holy cow, the whole thing really surprised me.
I put the cleats on per the instructions and torqued the bolts exactly to the spec. It felt like the cleats were moving, but they weren't. That was the sensation I felt - it was as if the cleats were spinning a bit when I'd go to clip out. Way back when I started riding I did have cleats that were loose and that was dangerous. But as I said, these are torqued to spec and they aren't spinning at all.
I will say the float is amazing. My guess is that it impacts the effort of unclipping. It seems like the super-wide range of float is leading to the difficulty of clipping out. I have to move my heel so far out that is feels like my foot is perpendicular to the bike. That's an exaggeration, but still...
I'm using new, Specialized S-Works XC shoes. The soles of the shoes have negligible wear. I have heard from a friend that the soles / tread of the shoes shouldn't be worn down too much since the pedals need to have contact with the tread on the sole.
Any advice?
