I've been using Crank Brothers Eggbeater pedals on my fixed gear bike since the Fall and decided at the beginning of the year to use them on my newly built up road bike. If you aren't familiar with them, the diminutive Eggbeater pedals are typically used on Mountain Bikes and have a single spring interface allowing 4-sided entry. They are elegant, simply designed pedals and because of the open design of the clips, they allow mud to easily be cleared, a bonus for off road riders. You can read a good review of the pedals here.

So I 've been using these pedals for the past 6 months. They are working fine for the short, flat city riding I do around town on my fixie and even performed well on the training rides I've been doing on my road bike in Central and Prospect Parks. But in the last few weeks, I've been doing hillier training rides on Route 9W and River Road and have started to feel hot spots on my feet.

If you don't know what they are, hot spots refer to the the sore and hot feeling you get on your feet at the point where your shoe cleats make contact with the pedal. As you can see from the image of the Eggbeaters above, the pedal only makes contact with your shoes on the two horizontal points that engage the cleat. This is fine most of the time for me, but when I do longer rides or when I mash down on the pedals a little more on climbs, I've started to feel the hot spots. So, of course, I've been reading around on the forums to see if other people are having this experience.

Turns out that some other roadies do get hot spots with Eggbeaters. Some of these folks really like the simplicity of the Eggbeater design, as I do, and are reluctant to go with other pedals. So what a few people have suggested is to look at the Crank Brothers Quattro SL Road Pedals, a shoe made for roadies that features the same single spring clip interface, but also includes a platform to make contact with your shoe. Sounded like a decent idea, so I got interested in buying a set. Problem is, I ride with Sidi Dominator 5 Mega shoes, a cleated mountain bike shoe, and I was worried that the rubber cleats on the side of the shoe would interfere with the pedal platforms. I contacted Crank Brothers to see if that was the case, and sure enough it is. The photo below shows where the cleats make contact with the pedal.

I'm not about to keep switching cleats on my pedals and definitely won't drop more money on a second pair of shoes. Luckily, the folks at Crank Brothers told me that it is possible to use the Sidi Dominators with the Quattro if I modify the shoe so that the rubber cleat on the inside of each shoe near the pedal contact is shaved down a little.

This cleat bumps into the pedal's inboard bearing cover, making it nearly impossible to clip out. The modification is really quite simple though. I took an exacto knife and shaved away the cleat at an angle that would allow the bearing cover to clear. See the photo below for cutting area. As noted in the comments by nicobot, how much and wear you shave the rubber cleats depends on the cleat position and shoe size. As you can see from the photo, my cleat is situated to the furthest back position, which happens to put it closer to the ball of my foot.

Simple modification. And now I can use my favorite shoes with a Crank Brothers pedal and be happy. So far the feel has been great. The shoe's side cleats are making contact with the pedal platform, so I'm assuming that I'll be rid of the hot spots. If that's not the case, you can be sure that I'll be bitching about it here later.