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Flat pedals from Look? Yes! The TRAIL ROC drops in

  • Ron 

LOOK, the company that invented the clipless pedal, has dropped their first no-clip, non-road, flat pedal EVER – the TRAIL ROC!

LOOK called upon their years of pedal design experience to create a pedal for the a freer riding style without losing that all-important feel of the bike through your feet.

Starting with the ‘good stuff’, while there are a lot of flat pedals for the MTB crowd out there, some are great while some are lame CNC carryovers from the early days of BMX. Look knows pedals and the TRAIL ROC sports two sets of premium ball bearings in the spindle and a DU bushing to keep them spinning smoothly and reliably, regardless of the conditions and abuse from the trail. Plus, a strong, durable forged Chromoly axle gives a secure connection to the cranks to get maximum efficiency out of every stroke when out on tough all-day rides. What’s more, the TRAIL ROC offers a wide 110mm square platform that is forged and machined from aluminum alloy.

While the size and the 12 metals pins of the TRAIL ROC definitely feel great under foot, and the pedal body is enviably thin, their attempt to set the pins at different heights to help engage the foot with the pedal does not seem to work. Despite the pins being calf-destroyingly poky, the TRAIL ROC still felt a little ‘greasy’ underfoot when things got a little sketchy. The goal of the varying pins heights is to give the platform a concave shape that cradles the foot securely in place, but in my experience, pedals like the DMR Vault, Bergtec Penthouse and Hope F20 achieve this better by actually making the platform concave.

Nonetheless, the TRAIL Roc’s thin 17mm pedal profile does give a little bit of extra ground clearance over some of the competition.

 

LOOK’s Pedal Product Manager Alexandre Lavaud said that the TRAIL ROC was designed with a priority on ‘lightness, grip, safety and… a perfect connection between rider and bike through the pedal’ and they’ve scored on most of those points. I’d love to see them give a couple of millimeters to each side of the pedal to truly cradle the foot. They definitely score on the safety/reliability and lightness criteria.

Team KMC ORBEA and Sunn Enduro Team are both using the TRAIL ROC in the 2021 season, and I’m certain that their valuable, real-world feedback will lead to future improvements for the TRAIL ROC.

The TRAIL ROC is available now from LOOK retailers globally for 79.90 EUR / MSRP 80.00 USD. For more information on the TRAIL ROC and the rest of the platform pedal collection, visit lookcycle.com.

 

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