Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
The subject of shoes seems to stir up some very passionate feelings in people. While you may have many sets of riding clothes, it’s unlikely that you have more than one, or two, pairs of shoes. And as you ride them, you inevitably wear some of your character into them.
Here, Chipps and Jo Burt get all unnecessary about their differing choices of footwear.
Tight, tight, tight, t-i-g-h-t.
Jo Burt
I don’t want any of those mountain bike shoes that look like a pair of squashy skate sneakers or rambling Timberlands, I want something that shows total dedication to the Art of forward motion from the cyclical, shoes that look like sharks, Italian sharks. I need to be bound in so tight that my foot becomes part of the bike and my body only really starts above the ankle.
I lust after that elusive combination of laces and straps and ratchet mechanisms that grip the foot in an orthopaedic vice. Forget comfort – comfort is the reward after a good ride when I peel the shoes off and slip into something soft, it’s akin to an orgasm for those ten little piggies down there.
It’s got to be tight enough so that when I stop and the blood drains from thighs to soles, they start to expand and hurt, hurt enough to have to undo the straps before the prickly heat attacks. As it is, I’ve got shoes that I can only wear for a couple of hours before the pain starts – real pain; burning holes into the balls of the feet, tendons on the top gnawed raw and bloody, slowly squeezed like some size 41 Anaconda. I like these shoes. These are my racing shoes, I can use the pain in my feet to distract me from the pain of racing. It usually kicks in about half- way round the last lap and is enough to see me to the Finish as quickly as possible so I can tear the corset of leather, plastic and hopefully carbon-fibre off and stand in a bucket of blissful cold water.
This torture, like all tortures, has its own little ritual; right foot first (I don’t know why), half do up the straps or laces, repeat for the left shoe. Check the tongues are straight (I’ve got a pair whose tongues always migrates towards the outside of the shoe, it doesn’t rub, it just ruins the aesthetic of the shoe), tighten the laces and straps the rest of the way, stand up, rock backwards and forwards a few times while wiggling the toes, sit down again and re-tighten. Run up and down the stairs to loosen everything up a bit and tighten again. This should be OK until about half a mile down the road when everything will have to be tightened up again (Freewheel, click, click, half a revolution, freewheel, click, click). There’s a permanent black spot on my right big toe (my right foot is the larger) from all this Chinese Binding although technically all my shoes fit me perfectly. It’s a branding of dedication.
I could go on; the tumescent rasp of Velcro, the taught squeak of pulled laces, feeling a ratchet mechanism flex near its limit as you force it one more click, the glorious agony of shoes shrunk half a size by washing, the complex issue of tightening as the shoe, gets wet and stretches – straps pulled tighter still and lolling off the sides like cows tongues, spending three times as much on a cycling shoe than you would ever dare on a ‘normal’ pair, the important subject – related but totally separate – of the perfect white sock…
It’s a fetish, the cycling equivalent of red patent leather stilettos strapped all the way up a shapely calf.
You can have me, if you can catch me.
Old shoes
Chipps
There they sit, still damp from the ride, cleats rusting silently. A pair of old companions, campaign veterans. Spangly new on a shelf when I found them. New Carnacs once, a hundred and something pounds tall. Now, training partners and Sunday riding pals alike. Slipper comfort, big as the boxes they came in. Just the one Velcro strap - a single rip, in or out. Instant familiarity. None of this tighten-til-your-feet-go-blue business They’re getting on a bit now, getting crow’s feet round the edges, but all the more pretty for it. There. There’s the scar from a crash - A reminder not to mess with the rocks. Noted, thanks. I guess I’ll have to retire them soon, put them out to pasture. Old before their time, and only good for riding down to the pub. No more epic day rides - drenched in sweat and streams, baked dry again in the sun. We’ve had some good times and some miserable walks home with busted bikes. They complained a lot less than I did. Though they’ve missed the odd step, a sign of age? Failing eyesight? On the whole, I’ll miss them. Time to go out shopping And buy a new love.
Time to go out shopping And buy a new love.
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