In this episode I had the great pleasure of chatting to someone who I have known for about 25 years and has had a profound influence of cycling over the last 30 years. Uli Schoberer is the inventor of the first power cranks and founder of SRM. His products have been used at world championships and in the pro-peleton for the last 25 years transforming our understanding of cycling performance. In the interview Uli gives as great historical account of the development of SRM right up to the most recent product the X-power pedals, SPD mountain bike pedals – the first mountain bike pedals to the market. Another first for SRM.

Virtually every serious cyclist will have heard of SRM power meters, and there is a very good reason for that. SRM were the first commercially available power meters which were incorporated into the chainset spider and thus could be fitted on to a standard bike. Not only were they the first, patented in 1987, but as you might expect from precision German engineering they were very good, extremely accurate and thus became the gold standard for power meters. The ability to measure power transformed cycling science which up to that point had relied on HR to determine exercise intensity. Having power measurement readily available during training and racing opened up a much wider understanding of the demands of racing and the responses to training based on power training zones.

As might be expected from the first model in 1987 SRM has continued to improve and innovate in the measurement of power on the bike. While the optimal place to measure power on a bike in at the chainset bicycle manufacturers have continually changes the configuration of the bottom bracket and chainset and there is not set standard making it increasingly difficult to produce a chainset based powermeter compatible with all bikes and thus SRM turned to a pedal version the EXKAT road pedal. Then the most recent development again an industry first a MTB SPD power pedal the X-Power pedal. Which as it says is designed to be accurate, reliable and tough.

Well I have had the pleasure of trying these pedals and I do have to agree that they are first and foremost a very good SPD pedal that are incredibly easy to set up and provide accurate and reliable power measurements. I have compared the readings with my Wattbike and the numbers are virtually identical.

As mentioned the set up couldn’t be easier simply put on the pedals as normal then using the x-power app calibrate the pedals in the vertical position and that’s it.