When riding earlier this week, I had a heckuva time trying to engage my cleats. Usually, I can click in without looking, but on this particular ride I missed the pedal every time. That’s especially bothersome when trying to cross a busy intersection, even when the cross traffic is stopped by a red light. When I got home, I took a look at my cleats:
Yipes! The right one, especially, the one I use to click in almost exclusively, seems to be beyond worn. No wonder I couldn’t get the cleat to engage the pedal. It’s a far cry from what they looked like when they were new:
Then, I joined our regular Sunday morning club ride today. About halfway through the ride, I realized I was having no trouble getting the cleat to click into the pedal. I was — still am — baffled. Why did it give me such trouble four days ago, but not today?
And just when should cleats be replaced?
I know from experience that they should be. The cleat I had in my previous shoes wore this badly, and once it came right out of the pedal at a bad time — when I was applying power to climb a hill. In fact, that happened more than once, and the second time I crashed because I lost control of the bike.
So I’m going to get a new set of cleats ASAP. As I said, they’re obviously way past replacement time. But just when are cleats worn badly enough to merit replacement? Are there things to look for that serve as replacement clues?



Inevitably, however, those pads will start to peel apart if you ride enough. I’ve found that by talking very nicely with the people at the helmet companies, they’ll send you a new pair free of charge. The rep that helped me most recently mentioned it’s supposed to be a one-time courtesy, but I’m pretty impressed that Bell has replaced the pads on my old Ukon twice, and just took care of my current Furio. That’s good business…just don’t tell them I sent you.
Enter the silver Sharpie marker. It shows up on things like black handlebars, seat posts, and shoe bottoms. As a result, you can mark anything you decide to change and, if it doesn’t work, find your way home again. My handlebars have a nice little dot that shows just where they should line up with the seam on my stem, my seat post shows my current preferred height, and my cleats are traced perfectly against the soles of my shoes, so when the current cleats wear out, the new ones can go in the exact same position.
If you look closely, you’ll see the little ruler markings right behind the cleat. The photo was shot from slightly behind the cleat; if you looked straight down at it, you wouldn’t be able to see the marks at all.