Did It Make Her Faster? Anna's 30 Day Flat Pedal Challenge

I joined the mountain biking scene pretty late in life, but I started racing cross-country almost immediately, and there was absolutely no question that I would be moving from flat pedals to clipless pedals. However, outside of the cross-country scene, people keep telling me that flat pedals make you a better rider. If you can ride flat pedals, you're good. Put it this way, could Danny MacAskill, Chris Ackrigg, or this gentleman here have done the things they do on clips? No. Flat pedals, they win medals. Well, I guess it's time for another 30-day challenge to prove it to myself. Now, it's pretty commonplace for people to start off with flat pedals and flat shoes because there's very little commitment. First of all, they're about a third of the price of clips and even clipless shoes as well. Also, other than the financial commitment, you don't have to worry about setting them up. You don't have to worry about attaching the cleats to your shoes, and you don't have to worry about the learning process that comes with clipping into your bike. Fight your fingers. Come like this. See there? Let's stop again. I've now fallen over. I can't actually unclip. Progressing to clipless pedals was a natural choice for me because I was into cross-country in the start. With clipless pedals, they will offer you the ability to clip into the pedals, obviously, and get this nice circular motion with your pedal strokes. That means you're not just relying on power from the downstroke, you can get a backwards and an upwards motion, and you effectively get more power more often in your pedaling, but also you use more muscles in your legs and you don't just rely on your quads, which means less fatigue over time. Obviously, that's why most people ride clipless in cross-country racing and certainly in the World Cups. Now, when I moved over to enduro racing, I wasn't going to switch. I was very used to them, and I also really like the feeling of being attached to my bike. I like the security over rough terrain, and I like the fact that maybe I could be a little bit aggressive without worrying about falling off my pedals and maybe losing some skin on my shins. The theory goes that flat pedals make you a better rider because you can commit to corners and know that you can easily make a dab on the inside if you need to. Perhaps crashing is a little less scary when you're not attached to the bike, or maybe you'll avoid a crash altogether because you can dismount pretty quickly. Also, I think doing no-footed tricks in the air is pretty favorable on flat pedals. Not that that's a concern to me, but cue some cool footage of Blake doing something. For now, I think, for me, I'm wondering, if flat pedals win medals, then why is it that 100% of the XC World Cup racers are on clipped pedals? With the Enduro World Cup as well, only a handful of them are riding flat. Even in the Downhill World Cup, the vast majority are on clipped pedals. If flat pedals are so good, then why are they still using clips? I guess there's only one way to prove it to myself, and we need to head to the top of the track. I'm going to explain the challenge to you up there. Let's go. Now, there's no point in me doing a back-to-back test on clips and flats because I never ride flat. Of course, I'm going to be faster on the clips if we were to do a timed run, say. The real challenge is if I actually commit to these things and I ride them for 30 days at least. For the next month, I'm going to ride flats absolutely exclusively, see if they make me a better rider. First, well, before my personal hell begins, let's get a final run in the clips. Getting clipped in is obviously not going to be a problem anymore. Steady. Right, enough fun on the clips. Let's go and put those flat pedals on. I am genuinely nervous about riding down this trail in flats. I've just pedaled up the uplift, and I've already taken my foot off the pedals by accident. I realized I can't backpedal myself into a good level platform either. Well, I guess it's test time. Enough clipless fun. This is what I look like on day one of flat pedals. Oh, God. Oh, God. There's the entrance. Oh, yes. Now, obviously, I am incredibly slow on flats. The anxiety ran really high today. I felt like I was just going to levitate off my bike. I felt like a complete passenger. I felt like I was a newbie again. I hated every minute of it, but the challenge starts now where I commit to these horrible things that make me feel like a beginner again for 30 days, and we'll come back here and see if it's made any difference. Let's head over to the vlog section. I'm just getting ready for a bike ride. My other flat shoes that I started with are soaking wet. Luckily, Shimano have provided another pair for me in a different color, so anti-fashionable. What's interesting is when I have my clipless shoes, which I've done from the start, as I've said, usually, I get myself a cup of tea. I sit down in the evening, fireplace on in the winter, and I'd be setting up my cleats. I'd be putting them in, putting the shims underneath, getting them to the angle I think I want. Then I go and sit on my bike, and then I'd try and make sure that the angle's right, do a bit of backpedaling. If they're not, we readjust them. Then we sit on the bike, and we bed them in by clipping in and clipping out. Just watch me set up my flat shoes right now. All right, here we go. Shoe. It's my first casual ride out on the flat pedals, and it's very disconcerting. I feel like I'm just going to fall off my bike at any given opportunity. Also, the worst thing about this is that I'm so used to being clipped into place and making minor adjustments, having a little bit of horizontal movement on my clips. With the flat pedals, I'm not only putting my foot in the wrong place, sometimes too far out, sometimes too far in, sometimes the angle's wrong. Once you're on and you're going down the descent, you can't move it back in like you do with clips because the pins stop you from moving. Obviously, that's their point, but that's what I'm most annoyed about right now. Let's give it another three weeks and see if I can make that any better. What's that flame? A ball of flames in the sky. Oh, no. It's the day after Boxing Day, and me and some friends have taken or found a brief moment in the storm where it's actually not raining and not crazy windy, although it's still windy, to session some corners and see if I can learn how to corner on them. I feel like a bit of a noob. Nice. I totally blew off the pedal. Okay, that was a really good session. It's reminded me that I really just don't session things anymore. I think when you're learning something new, like riding on flat pedals, constantly doing new things, new trails all the time just doesn't help you learn anything. I feel like I've been constantly afraid of falling off the pedals because everything is new, whereas when I was sessioning those corners, I was improving a little bit and getting a feel for the same corner and working out where my limits are. I'm still riding very timidly on these flats, and I'm so tired of it. I want to ride my clips again. Day 29 complete. No one died. Let's go get that final day. It's been a month on flat pedals, and I know you're probably expecting to see the new Hans Rey or Chris Hackrigg, but that's just not the case. That's not the reality. 30 days on flats has been hellish for me, to be honest. I think 20 years or so riding solely in clipless pedals is a big habit to break, and it's been hard for me to change the way I ride. I think if you'd have started riding in flats, the earlier the better, and I do think it would have contributed to making me a better all-around rider. However, starting this late is just a bit difficult. There has been some minor progression as I settled into those flats. I started to pump the track a lot more. I made my actions more defined, pumping lips, pumping roots, pumping the trail, mainly because I was scared of falling off the flat. I was over-exaggerating the movements, and I realized I was getting a lot more lift out of my bike. It made me realize that I was a bit lazy in that respect on my clips because usually with clips, you could just pull up if you haven't made enough effort on the lift. I think that has been interesting for me to learn. I've also learned that pedal size and pin length makes a massive difference. If you're thinking about moving over to flats or you're starting in flats, do experiment with size because I think the bigger the pedal, the better, the more stable you feel. Longer pins give you more grip as well in your shoes, and that makes a big difference to your confidence. For me, I guess the conclusion is they're just not for me, but that's not the conclusion for everyone. There are some people out there that absolutely swear by them. I think just choose what you want to ride, what appeals to you, and stick to that camp. Be a **** about it because at the end of the day, if you feel good doing it, then it's the right choice for you. That's all I've got time for. Let me know what you think down in the comments below. Should I be trying something else for 30 days? I've done the 30-day hardtail challenge and the flat pedal challenge, so what's next?