My recently acquired Trek Fuel EX 8 came stock with Crank Bros. Candy pedals. As I’m a confirmed SPD user, the bike shop offered to swap them over for some lovely shiny XT SPDs.

These were out of stock but got posted to me a couple of days later. Taking them out of the packaging I felt an unusual ‘grumpy old git’ moment.

Normally the small troubles of life pass me by but some things are just soooo stoooopid that they irk me. Yep, ‘The most useless piece of plastic in mountain biking?’. Single use SPD reflector covers.

I’m sure the pedals come with these things due to some arcane law requiring pedals to have reflectors that predates the invention of things like LED lights and probably mountain bikes! However they are just a complete waste of time.

Nobody who goes to the expense of buying even the cheapest standard SPD would want to keep them on their pedals. If you want an SPD with a cage for riding with/without SPD shoes you buy a different Shimano pedal. Then just to add injury to insult, they would probably kill you off road since they offer so little grip, they are bloody difficult to get off (they just bend and bend but don’t release) and I skinned my knuckles trying to get them off.

If they were multi use then I could see the point but by the time you have levered the damn things off they are trashed and are only ready for the bin. Not very ‘green’ I think you’d agree. So Mr Shimano please no more pedal covers.