To help you understand my perspective: I am just a mountain bike guy, just trying to improve fitness. I’m not the expert bike handling guy so being clipped in was not for me. I’m a heavier guy and regular shoes with flats hurt my feet after about 1 1/2 hours.
My observations after about 120 miles on them, almost all singletrack:
- many years of habit of riding on the balls of your feet (like since I was a kid) took a while to break. I am still catching myself reverting to riding on the balls of my feet from time to time, and they get uncomfortable. It is quickly fixed but I still think about it. The soreness goes away completely with the arch centered pedal position.
- I feel VERY stable riding downhill. Heels- down is not as low because your heel is less distant from the spindle. Having both sides of the arch planted feels strong.
- I think I have the same number of pedal strikes (that is hard to objectively measure). For sure the type of pedal strikes are not the toe-catching, bike stopping high impact kind. They are more flat-hit, pedal-over kind.
- I feel stronger climbing but I have also improved my fitness using TR. The pedals seemed to help but I cannot say with certainty this is a contributing factor, only a suspicion.
- you will need to move your saddle forward to get the foot placement right.
In summary, it is a purchase I was hesitant to make (I was skeptical too) but wish I would have done it sooner. For a guy of my skill, fitness and ride durations they have helped reduce sore feet to almost nothing and increased my confidence downhill. I think they help uphill a little too. Also I can ride in any shoe.