First off, I don’t know how to do the flying mount/dismount. I know before I do it in a race I need to practice. But I don’t really know the details of this maneuver…and would rather not kill myself.
The reason I say I’d rather not kill myself is due to what happened this weekend.
I come ripping out of transition…and because I don’t know how to do the flying mount…I basically stop dead, throw my leg over and start rolling.
To my dismay I really struggle to get hooked into my pedals. I have Look Pedals and have begun to really hate them. Any time I really need to get locked in, I struggle. I’ve been bitching about them for weeks and not done anything. Plus I’ve been having trouble slipping out of the pedal at odd times while riding. Well I paid the price for all of that this weekend.
So there I am rolling lightly forward…and my I clip in to the right pedal. I then promptly slip out. I curse, look straight down (this is why they are called Look pedals, you have to look to get into them) to get back into my pedal and run smack into a red cone. All momentum is stopped and I fall flat on my left ass cheek which is now bruised as bad, if not worse than my ego. I get up…offend every family in a 3-mile radius, and try again…by this time I’m so flustered I clip yet another cone. I finally clip in and bust out of transition faster than the speed of sound. My only thought was get me the F out of here before people recognize me.
I was a mess for the rest of the ride and unable to hold the power I know I can. It was a 16 mile ride and I was 30 watts below my threshold, yuck. In total between stopping to mount the bike, falling on my butt, all blood rushing out of my legs and into my face, and loss of focus for the ride, I figure I lost a few minutes. Plus my butt and hamstring were a touch sore for the ride and run.
So I have 2 questions.
#1 please explain how you do a flying mount and how it works for you/how you practiced it. Do you rubberband your shoes in, or put them on first, etc. Are there good “instructional videos” for idiots? Where did you practice?
#2 Will speedplay’s be better in terms of clipping in and out? Other recommendations?
If you haven’t mastered a standing start, I don’t think the solution is a more difficult to execute flying start. It sounds like you need to just slow down and relax a little bit. Speedplays are a little easier to get into, but Look isn’t significantly harder. I don’t think changing pedals is going to solve your problem.
I don’t do the total flying mount, but a modified kid style mount. On the left side of the bike with the left pedal forward…I run and do a little skip on my right leg…with the skip I get my left foot on the pedal and that gets the cranks turning and I swing the right leg over on top of the right pedal about the time it is at top dead center. I do this on the mountain bike too. It’s the way I prefer to do it without worrying about slamming my balls on the seat.
I can do the full-on CC mount on my cross and road bikes, but the saddle position in space on my tri bikes is different enough that I prefer not to. my modified flying mount for tri involves hitting the pedal on the side of the bike I’m running on with my arch/instep. just plant it hard on the inside of my foot trying to wedge my arch into the angle between the pedal and the crankarm. this gives me a hardpoint to put my weight into as I swing my offside leg around/over the saddle and get my butt planted. now that I’m on the bike and still rolling (all of this was happening at a dead run) I can take the time to get clipped in.
best practice if you’ve never done anything like it before: use any bike that has platform pedals, or install some on your tri bike just for this purpose. start with a walk, then move on to running.
Just go to a grassy field (short grass not the really thick stuff) and practice, from a standing start position, putting your left foot on the pedal and clipping in then pushing forward and upping yourself into the saddle, then clipping the right foot in, then roll around slowly and practice clipping and unclipping a bunch. Repeat.
When you get comfortable with that and get to where you don’t have to look so much, then you can think about doing a moving start. I race 'cross a lot so for me it’s easier to do a full on cross style jump into the saddle and then clip than it is to put my shoes on while rolling 20mph. Plus some races won’t let you leave your shoes clipped in, so it’s good to be able to do a regular running mount.
Also, do your Looks let you adjust tension? To make it easier/harder to get in and out of the clips?
It isn’t that I haven’t mastered the standing start…the right pedal is truly a problem. there have been several occassions where I’ll be pedaling along on a flat and the shoe slips out. I have no idea why. Going up hill it’s slips too. I have another pair of look pedals I plan to swap to. they have never given me this problem. I should have done this long ago as this pedal may kill me if I slip like that at the wrong time. I was lucky I was going so slow.
I did make a mistake at the race. I typically stop dead to mount the bike. I’ve never had a problem doing that. For some reason this time I slightly kicked off and was rolling the entire time. That was rather stupid as I had not done it ever before and still don’t know why I did it.
My reason behind the faster mount is two-fold.
First, I know many people leave the shoes clipped to the bike and have rubber bands holding the shoe in place.
Second, it is faster.