Review: Garmin Rally XC200 Pedals

I acquired a bunch of Garmin stuff at an employee discount, which meant that rather than jumping on the XC100, I paid $700 for the XC200 pedals. Coming from the powerpod, these are an astounding improvement: they're not finicky --- install them on your bike, pedal backwards and unclip, and the units calibrate and you're finished. No 10 minute test ride. From then on, as long as you don't swap the pedals over to another bike, all you have to do is ride.

Despite warnings from others, I've found that my existing SPD shoes and cleats mesh perfectly well with the Rally pedals. They behave just like regular SPDs, except that you have to swap batteries once in a while and they're heavier. But they feel solid and just as indestructible as the stuff Shimano produced.

The data from the pedals are much more accurate than from my old powerpod. No more bizzaro spikes to 1200w (which I'm pretty sure I'm not capable of doing) when they're out of calibration. In fact, now I know that my old powerpod numbers were inaccurate, I have to go back and delete them. That's how bad they were.

There are two ways to use power meters: to train, or to pace yourself. I loaded up a training program to try to train and discovered that it's much harder than you expect to actually use structured training. It's very easy to overshoot or undershoot what your training program asks you to do. After my one session, the Edge 840 declared that I was only 15% compliant. Ok, I'm never going to win any races.

The dual leg nature of the Garmin pedals let you know whether your legs are balanced (I'm 1-3% off, depending on the day). If your legs are grossly unbalanced you might have one leg longer than the other and might want to see a podiatrist to get prescribed orthotics. But mine were fine. The power meter also lets you know if your perceived effort is much higher or lower than usual. The way to use that is if you go out cycling and your perceived effort is much higher and your watts aren't responding you should actually call it a day and go home and rest more. OK, I hardly ever do that --- which is another reason I'll never be a good bike racer. Cycling time is too precious to waste!

Finally, the pacing yourself thing is worth thinking about. In practice, this is how I will use the power meter. If you're working too hard, slack off a bit. Oh wait, you're climbing a 20% grade? You're already in your lowest gear? Too bad. Just kill yourself and get it over with and rest. Ok, so maybe a power meter isn't going to help you.

Finally, one of my long distance randoneuring friends told me this trick: just use the power meter to gauge progress and motivate yourself. If your power has plateaued, go climb some hills and do some intervals. The rest of your time, just relax and take it easy. Sounds like a good idea!

I wasn't going to move the pedals from bike to bike But it turns out that now that I have them I do take the trouble to move them to the Roadini whenever I do a gravel ride on it. I guess I do like the info! But now that I have them, I suspect I'll probably take the trouble to pack them into carry-on luggage and bring them on tour, as well as spare batteries, just because those big blocks of riding means you get lots of data. I'll probably try them on the gravel bike once in a while to see how they go.

Do I regret buying them? Not at the price I paid --- though in retrospect I probably only needed the single sided power meter --- I would have been better off buying 2 pairs of the single-leg power meters! The better data alone tells me that while I can't improve my VO2max much more, I can improve my power quite a bit. I just have to have a plan and motivate myself to do so. These cost much more than the crank-arm based ones, but I think the fact that they're easy to move from bike to bike means I'll have power data much more often, and that's worth something.