The Shimano PD-EH500 is a combination bike pedal that comes with SPD cleats on one side and flats on the other. It’s similar to the Shimano M324 but comes in a slightly different design and colour. In this video, I’ll review the pedal and show you what it looks like on the bike.
The SPD side is a standard mountain bike clip, with adjustable tension so that you can control how easy it is to clip in and out of. By default, they come quite tight so you will probably want to reduce some of the tension before using them.
The colour is dark grey. This suits most cranksets better than the metal look of the M324. However, it should be noted it is suitably different from black, so will still look slightly different if you get your eyes up close. And the clip itself is pedal.
The flats side provide a fair amount of grip. Each pedal comes with six screws that you can insert into the pedal to give your shoes something else to grip onto.
I like these pedals. They have replaced the PD-M530 SPD pedals I had on my bike as I found I did want to ride flat when I was just popping down to the bike shop or over to Parkrun. And they still look pretty cool.
The Shimano M324 is a combination bike pedal. They have SPD cleats on one side and flats on the other so you can choose whether you want to ride clipped in, or whether you just want to stick your regular shoes on for those shorter commutes to work or Parkrun.
This does mean that you need to put your foot down on the correct side of the pedal. But it is fairly easy to spin them around to the other side if you find yourself on the wrong one. They’re unpainted metal colour, which doesn’t fit with all bikes.
You can adjust the tension on the pedal to make it easier for the cleat to clip in and out of. Typically, they come from the factory with lots of tension on so you will probably want to take some of that off before using them.
They come with a pair of SPD cleats, which I believe are the ones that allow you to twist your foot either way to unclip. If you prefer a single direction for unclipping, you’ll want to swap these out for Shimano’s black SPD cleats.
I’ll also show you what they look like on the bike. But I won’t be riding it because that bike doesn’t have a saddle at the moment: poor planning on my part! These are a great beginner pedal for those looking to try clipless pedals for the first time.
If you are considering these, you should also consider the Shimano PD-EH500 pedals. They are another hybrid/combination pedal but a slightly different design and colour. I have a video review on those, too.
The Nike Air Zoom Span are running shoes from Nike. They’re my favourite trainers to run in and got me through my first marathon and my first ultra. In this video, I’ll review them.
The Span is Nike’s mid-support range. They have more support than their standard trainer not as much as their fully supportive offering, the Structure. This allows them to be lighter weight and more flexible than their counterpart.
My favourite feature about them is the lack of any kind of structure in the toe box. It’s just a mesh, which is a saviour for someone like me who has big shoes and always finds they are getting caught up in the top of the shoe.
In this video, I’ll review the Kitbrix kit bag. They’re not your ordinary sports bag: instead, they’re constructed like bricks that can be chained together in a long line for transporting loads of equipment. Is that something you need, though?
They’re really rugged. They come with a rigid bottom that holds the shape of the bag, and the walls are double lined so that they are way more waterproof than an ordinary bag, or even your waterproof coat. They come with three internal pockets, one of which is transparent for holding paper notes. There are a further four mesh pockets on the outside.
The zip is super heavy duty so that it will keep water out and allow you to chain the bags together without fear. This does make it really difficult to use, though. It’s not broken, as far as I can tell, it’s just built to last and this means sacrificing a lot of ease of use.
One of the key features of the Kitbrix is that you can take two of the bags and turn them into a backpack. I’ll show you how to do this in the video. The zip is a bit difficult to do, but otherwise the system works really well and I use this every time I go to a triathlon race.
Overall, the bag system works really well. Every time I go to a race or cycling sportive I take a couple of them so that I can divide my gear into different sections: pre-race, transition bag, post-race recovery and change of clothes. It is expensive, though. And less convenient than the backpacks and transition bags you can buy. So, it might come down to how light you travel. For me, I travel heavy and these work great.
My triathlon club, Hyde Park Harriers Tri, recently added a spin class to their line-up. I went to my first session last week.
On the plus side, it was great to spin with the other members of the club. However, it’s also frustrating to have to pay for the class when I have free classes at The Edge, and while the instructor is fine, she’s not my favourite spin instructor.
Overall, though, I’ll be going back, at least for another session.
Last weekend, the Super League Triathlon final took place in Singapore. Katie Zerefes continued her domination of the women’s event while Vincent Luis managed to hang on to his lead, despite picking up a puncture. Jonny Brownlee was the highest placed Brit in third.
It’s a weird system. Vincent Luis won the overall championship because he came first in the final race, but also because the guy in 6th outran the guy in 7th or something like that. Even the commentators didn’t seem to know what was going on. They need to simplify that.
I don’t like it as much as World Series, as sometimes it feels a bit gimmicky, and the racing is over pretty quickly. But it is a fun addition to the triathlon schedule.
Super Bowl III saw the New England Patriots face off against the Los Angeles Rams.
Picking a side was difficult. I don’t like the way US sports teams sometimes just move and leave their fans behind. So, cheering on the Patriots to beat the St Louis Rams seemed the obvious choice. However, a few days before, Patriots owner Robert Kraft came out and said Trump was doing a wonderful job and Rupert Murdoch was the best human being alive. Not sure how to respond to that.
As it was, we were treated to quite possibly the dullest Super Bowl ever. The game finished 13-3 to the Patriots. There was only one touchdown for the entire game. I mean Super Bowl XLVIII was massively one-sided but this was the lowest scoring Super Bowl in history.
Still, every Super Bowl is a chance to party, and party we did. In many ways, it is nice that the sport did not get in the way of conversation.
I’m pleased to announce the release of the next major version of Rauma, 4.0.
Rauma is a full-stack PHP framework that gives you database, templating, session, authentication and many other functions out of the box. It’s the framework behind many of Worfolk Online’s websites.
Not much as changed in the 4.0 release, but it gets a major version bump because it’s a breaking change. Here’s what you need to know:
Authentication has been overhauled. The auth service now includes an isLoggedIn function to be a bit more verbose than checking for data. More importantly, you can now extend the base Authorisation class and create your own. This allows you to cache more data, connect to other services and implement persistent logins.
We’ve also deprecated the user description field, in favour of the new attributes feature that was added in version 3.6.
Two other things to be aware of:
There are now a set of proxy objects for things like JsonResponse so that you don’t have to import them from a different namespace.
This bumps the PHP version requirement from 5.6 to 7.1. This allows us to bring in a load of cool new stuff, including a far more up-to-date version of PHPUnit.
I’ve torn my calf muscle. This is probably the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone.
It’s frustrating because I haven’t been able to train for two weeks now. I got back in the pool to try and keep my fitness up but even that is uncomfortable. I’m literally on like week 6 of my #RoadToKona and I’m already having to take at least a couple of weeks off.
Earlier this week, I did Leeds Bike Mill‘s introduction to bike maintenance course. It’a four-hour evening session to teach you the basics. Leeds Bike Mill is based in the same building as the Peddler’s Arms, a drop-in bike workshop that is community run.
It met my expectations: it wasn’t as clean and polished as the Evan’s Fix It course, but it was far more hands on. That is far more valuable than watching someone else do it. So, even though four hours seems a long time to change a tyre, do an M check and fiddle around with the brakes, it’s sort of understandable where that time went.
We also covered gears, which both Evan’s and Woodrup didn’t really do, so it was nice to take a look at that because gears are always my biggest problem on the bike. Unfortunately, I didn’t get time to do any adjustments in the workshop itself and on the way home my chain fell off. Still, a chance to ride my old bike has eliminated any buyers remorse about the one I am riding now.
All in all, I would recommend if you want to cover the basics of bike maintenance.
