Flying Over The Radars

When it comes to creating the best experience out of any bicycle, contact points are key. Grips, saddle, pedals & shoes. And, tires. And, lever blades. If it touches the rider or touches the ground, then it is where fit and feel will be most noticeable, and upgrades will be most appreciated. We can add brakes to that list, after all, they control the relationship between our tires and terrain. Suspension will also greatly influence how we interface with the trail. Then there’s the discussion of handlebar shape. Wait, where was I? Contact points, pedals & shoes!

Enter the Chromag Radar pedals, a superior investment in giving your child the best off-road experience on any kids' rig. The Radar pedals have provided a fantastic foot pad for my daughter from her first tiny pair of Five Tens, riding her 20”-wheeled mountain bike, up to the size-2 stompers she’s been wearing until recently, pedaling her 24”-wheeled rig.

The pins are sharp and shoe-hungry and, as Cy noted in Pedals that bite back, that actually results in less bodily harm, not more, as feet tend to stay put. Still, mountain biking happens, and for those cases when my kid is going to be shinning herself, she relies on a set of excellent 7iDP Kids Transition pads that are long enough to absorb the impact.

We ride a fair bit, all year round, in every sort of weather conditions that Vancouver’s North Shore brings to bear, and other than a regrease they’ve been solidly reliable through years of riding. For an idea of mileage, this bike is almost exclusively ridden on trails and my grom has worn out a few sets of brake pads, tires, and recently a bottom bracket.

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Yes, the grippy 70mm x 93mm Radar platform is a treat for tiny feet, but suddenly sporting a kids’ size-3 - actually, a size-5 women’s – shoe, they’re looking rather tiny. Fair enough, Chromag lists the Radar as being good for kids from approximately aged 4-to-10, but it’s still a shocking end of an era. Shocking to my wallet at least. She has one fresher pair on her mountain bike and a beaten-and-rebuilt set on her lock-it-and-leave-it commuter/city rig.

So, there we were, sat on our seats, one foot down on the trail, yakety-yaking, when it suddenly dawned on me that the soles of my daughter’s gargantuan new tootsie protectors were swallowing her pedals whole. It doesn’t just look a bit silly, but now suddenly she’s having trouble landmarking her optimum foot position. Especially on climbs. Suffice it to say it’s distracting for both of us.

It would be disingenuous to claim true surprise here. I’ve tested two sizes of different brand’s flat pedals for multiple review series and find that too-small platforms are much harder to get along with than platforms that are too large, even significantly too large, for my size 10 (Euro 43) shoes. There’s no doubt that it’s time to upsize.

I’m on the journey of what pedals to get next, with my grom’s only feedback being that they should be blue and as awesome as her Chromags. There are plenty of great options now that she fits a small adult-sized platform. But I’m a little misty-eyed thinking of the years of amazing on-trail experiences and room to progress in skill, confidence, and terrain that the Radar pedals have provided.

Acknowledging that 94 USD is a significant investment in a kids' pedal, especially relative to the cost of many of the basic hardtail bikes I see groms riding on the trails, I’ve yet to meet a parent who regretted the purchase. The Radar pedals are available from any shop that’s serious about kids' mountain biking and direct from Chromag.