I came to a sad realization.
If I want to get cycling shoes that actually fit, I’m going to spend an assload of money. I look at the online bike catalogs and figure that I’ll end up paying about what I’d pay for a normal pair of sneakers for a set of riding shoes.
My wife was training for a half-marathon and Nike was sponsoring the training sessions and so they had a booth where you could try on Nike shoes for the session. I went with her one time and the folks at the Nike booth could not find a single pair of shoes that would fit me. I have oddball sized feet. They are about a half size apart from each other but generally fit in size 12 US EEEE shoes.
So I check out who makes shoes that are wide enough for me. Sounds like there are a few brands that do it, but only in their higher end shoes and they are already higher end brands. So I’m looking at several hundred bucks for a pair of cycling shoes. New Balance and ASICS, could you be so nice as to make a pair of economically priced yet well fitting cycling shoes? Please?
I just swapped out my old ASICS shoes that were 665 days old and worn every day and discovered that the already marginal toe clips that came with my Fuji were now simply not going to work with my new shoes that are a little more puffed up in the front. I’m going to take ‘em off and think about it for a bit. And then I went to a cycling store and looked at the toe clips for big feet and found that they were identical to my toe clips. I already have a fairly dim view of the actual benefits of anything other than natural given that I generally do not have any problems keeping my feet on the pedals and feel that the ability to transmit force over the whole rotation of the cranks is just plain overstated… so I’m just going to get rid of the toe clips. Only problem is that I don’t have the right wrench at home..
With my Topeak wedge, I don’t have room for any mounts on the seat post, so I’ve just got my back light clipped to the rear wedge. Yay for getting a light that also contains a reflector so I’m still legal.