Are these any good? Do you have to buy new pedels. Are they as good as standard clip-ins. I race mainly olympic triathlons…can you use these barefooted from the swim or do you put on your running shoes on after swim. Are they really worth it…well they save >1min in a T1??
No way they will save you 1 minute. I did an Oly last month with bike shoes clipped to my pedals. My TOTAL transition time was 1:15 and that included removing a wetsuit.
My strong suggestion would be to spend 1 hour practicing transitions leaving your bike shoes on the pedals. Watch the ITU folks that race in the Olympics. They all leave their shoes on their pedals and have lightening fast transitions.
There is definitely going to be some loss of power on the bike with the platforms compared to bike shoes.
They may save you a minute over all because the time savings is for T1 & T2. You only put on your running shoes once. In my duathlon days, my T2 transition was seconds with pedal platforms.
“You know you are getting old when you see your father in the mirror.” anon.
There is no time savings for T1. You still have to put on shoes. In fact, T1 would be slower with platforms than if you kept your bike shoes on your bike. In which case you might miss out on a fast train that leaves T1 ahead of you.
When I said my total transition time was 1:15, I meant T1 + T2 (41secs + 34secs). How can you save a minute off of that? Just running from one end of the transition area to other twice takes longer than 15 seconds!
They are good for extremely flat, non-technical, draft legal races (where you can sit in a pack). If there are many technical corners, climbs or time-triling involved, there is too much of a loss of power.