Sunday, February 16, 2014

Shoe comfort

I have Sasquatch feet. Most of my conventional shoes are american sized 14 with various designations for wide: 4E, XW, or whatever. Sometimes getting non conventional shoes turn into a challenge and cycling shoes fall right into the middle of this challenge but I've generally been successful with some shoes more comfortable than others.

My least comfortable shoes were my mountain bike shoes. They are sized 48 Wide and look like the picture. The spin classes that I've been taking recently require either SPD or Look compatible cleats. My tri and road cycle shoes match my pedals but they are Speed Play since I get the extra long pedal spindles for comfort. So I've been wearing my Specialized mountain bike shoes with the SPDs. The biggest problem is that these shoes have a racheting strap for closure and it seems like my foot is too high for comfort. I felt it was the best I could get given my foot challenges.

I was mindlessly surfing the web and found an extra long strap specifically for these shoes. I ordered them hoping beyond hope and found that with the longer strap, these are now comfortable.

Celebrating these little things like this makes me happy.

Also, I now have one less excuse to avoid these classes so I might need to increase my class attendance frequency from 2x a week to 3x a week.  Better would be to ride outside but there is still about a foot of snow on most of the ground covering up what looks like a world class collection of potholes. That being said, most of the bike clubs are targeting group rides starting on March 1 for the early season centuries. Maybe I should train for and potentially do one since if I could knock out a hundred I'm probably not in as bad shape as I think I am.

At least these shoes are comfortable now.

2 comments:

Kate Geisen said...

My brother has a similar issue with bike shoes. His feet aren't as big as yours length-wise, but they're really wide. No clearance rack luck-outs for him. Glad you found something to up your comfort level.

CautiouslyAudacious said...

I couldn't imagine have to run or bike in uncomfortable shoes! What a challenge! Glad you found some comfort.