Baby Needs A

... new pair of shoes!

A cow-orker just happened to be selling an almost new pair of 2-bolt cycling shoes in euro-size 43, which just happens to be exactly the size and style I wear. And lucky for me he was selling them for half off, and clearly hadn't realized that he included both shoes in the box until well after the transaction had been finalized!

Anyway, this is quite convenient as my main road/gravel shoes have been on their last legs for a while.

I've put quite a few miles on them and, as you may remember from a previous blog post, I already had to repair the heel bolster on one of them when the original plastic crumbled. The bolster on the other was starting to crumble and I wasn't looking forward to doing shoe-surgery again.

But before we start putting miles on the new shoes, we need to deal with that little "2-bolt" qualification I mentioned earlier.

Those two bolts hold the cleat on the bottom of the shoe, and that cleat snaps into the pedal to hold your foot from slipping off and is released with a simple twist of your foot. So, I need those cleats on the new shoes.

I run the cleats all the way forward on my road/gravel shoes. This gives me a little bit less toe-verlap so I don't catch the front tire with the tip of my shoes. It also gives me a slightly taller position on the bike which tends to work out well for me on road-geometry bikes. On my mountain bikes I run the cleats all the way back to give my feet a more centered perch on the pedals and a bit of a lower position on the bike, which I find to be ideal for off-road riding.

Keeping these cleats from coming loose is very important, so using a torque wrench and loctite is good insurance against the bolts unexpectedly backing out. So far I've never had an issue with this, and with any luck (and appropriate precautions) I never will.

And just in case one of these cleats does give me trouble, I do have some back-up sets.

But thanks to the cleats being hardened steel, there's plenty of life left in them yet.

So the only thing left is to retire the old shoes to their final resting place in my shoe-tomb.

It can enjoy its final nap in the cozy company of my first pair of bike shoes.