I've been riding fixed for 5 years now with my foot straps and I'm going to get a gravel bike soon. I was doing research on whether people run toe cages /straps on these kinds of bikes. How would you even injure yourself based on foot retention?
by -peace-of-shit-
12 Comments
Probably falling. In my opinion straps is redundant on a geared bike. Id go with clipless or just flats for geared bikes personally
User error
I almost broke my foot on foot straps
But it was because the strap got caught on the crank arm in rotation and locked my foot in a weird position.
Idk what caused it, but I guess it can happen
After riding clipless for over a year now, just get clipless. Straps suck in comparison
For geared bikes there is no reason to use straps at all. You can get the grip you need with decent flat pedals or clipless
Straps are great for commuting. Hard to run clipless if you don’t work in an office. That said I found I didn’t need pedal retention on my geared bike after going down to shorter cranks.
That’s anecdotal any bike can use any kind of retention
One time I meet up with a guy selling some cranks and I saw that he had some straps on a pair of rap trap pedals for his klunker/Schwinn. Out of context tho I thought his build looked 👍🙂.
I’ve been riding holdfast style straps for over a decade and never had an issue. I’ve used clipless as well, but always liked the simplicity of straps better.
I’ve had issues with broken ankles, achilles overuse and stitches from flat pedal pins raking up my shin.
Pedal strikes on sharp fast corners occurred on almost every ride with flats and straps. They’d thrash my shoes after a couple months too. Between the hospital bills and shoe replacements I can’t afford to ride in vans anymore.
People used to actually die from getting their foot caught in horse stirrups (aka the horse equivalent of foot straps) it can cause a thing called lisfranc injury, which before the days of surgery and antibiotics, would convert into gangrene.
I guess if you had the right kind of crash a lisfranc injury could be possible??
I’ve run flats with and with out straps on all my bikes. Same with clipless and cages. Personally I prefer flats and straps over all of them because it means I can stop and have a coffee with out looking like a goon whilst I walk in my shoes.
If I was doing a long ride (70 miles +) then I’d be clipless for comfort and power delivery. I’d still rather be running flats and straps on which ever bike it was though. Just FYI when I got my gravel bike I ran fxyation gates pedals and straps for a 100 mile ride. Loved it and had no issues with them. Run what you want just make sure they are set up properly.