[Sportsandrec] Tandem Tips and Clipless Pedals

[Thornbury, Kelly]

Clipless pedals will help with keeping your feet on the pedals, but if they are not set up properly, they will cause far more knee problems then they will cure. While they can "lock" your feet in a proper alignment, they can also lock them in an improper one, and there are far more "wrong" positions than right ones. This will be especially true for someone with initial knee problems, and, not being chauvinistic, but also for women, because female hip/femur geometry is different than men, and its only in recent years that bike and component manufacturers have considered these differences. My suggestion for clipless systems would be a MTB pedal for casual riding. The shoes tend to be more comfortable, are easier to walk in without damaging the cleats (the cleats are usually recessed into the tread), and are more common than road pedal systems. You can now find a wide variety of shoes and sandals that are also "fashionable" for those times off the bike (stopping at your favorite ice cream or coffee shop for example). Also, look for a pedal with some "float," which will allow you to pivot your foot a few degrees. You also don't want too much float, because if you have problems twisting your foot and knee, you may not have enough movement to unclip from the pedal. Be sure to discuss with your bike shop the float in relation to your shoes too. I have a set of biking sandals with cleats for my clipless pedals, and in thinking it would be more comfortable, I installed cleats with 15 degrees of float. Well, between the float of the cleats and the flex of the sandal design, I have a hard time releasing the shoe from the pedal (there is more movement in the set up before it releases than I have twist in my knee while on the bike). LM, it sounds like you have a pretty accommodating bike shop, and they should be able to help you set up a set of pedals and shoes. 

A note on clipless pedals: When I am training, or doing a lot of riding, I always include at least one day a week of riding on regular pedals. While clipless systems help keep your feet planted on the pedals, and can be used to "pull" the pedal up while not in the power phase of a stroke, they also allow you to develop bad pedaling habits like improper foot angles and not working to keep the foot centered properly on the pedal. Occasionally riding with regular pedals helps develop the muscle memory to reduce these bad habits. 

As for your wobble, could it be from not pedaling "in phase" with your husband/captain. I rode a tandem once with a first time captain on a bike neither of us had ridden before, and the whole trip we constantly wobbled. Come to find out near the end of the ride, the cranks were incorrectly set up, and were actually in opposite phase (the captain's right foot would face forward as my left would). I wonder if you are getting similar results because of your independent pedaling cranks? I've seen some racers use a slightly out of phase set up (no more Than 90 degrees) to create more power strokes through a pedal cycle, but at 180 degrees of opposition, my experience was that the bike wobbled all over the road. I've never ridden a bike with the independent pedaling, so I don't know how phase differences or revolution speed differences would affect the overall ride. 

As for starting, I like to put my foot down with the captain. Of course, I usually ride with captains who are smaller and not always experienced riders, and I don't want to "force" them to handle the weight by themselves. As you come to a stop, have the captain tell you which way the road/trail slopes, so you can put the "high" foot down. On the road, this is usually the left foot, as many streets are designed to run water towards the gutters. We then put the right foot in a "power" position somewhere between vertical and horizontal. At the start, give a good power stroke to get the bike going, and then maybe one or two revolutions without clipping into the other pedal. Then you and the captain can clip in one at a time while the other works to maintain forward momentum. I've tried starts while the stoker remains clipped in at a stop, but if the captain loses balance, its not always easy to get unclipped before rolling around in the street. Once you get really good, there is always the "track stand," where both you and the captain remain clipped in at a stop, and you just balance the bike without putting a foot down...Of course, its quite embarrassing to pull off a great track stand at a stop light, only to fall over when the light turns green...