Equipment Questions

Equipment
42

The three common reasons cycling shoes hurt are:

  1. Too tight. Make sure not to over tighten the straps/boas/laces. Remember, your feet swell while riding and over tightened shoes can hurt.

  2. Wrong cleat placement. This can put pressure on the wrong part if your foot. To fix, mark on the shoe where you big toe and little tie knuckles are. Loosen the cleats and slide them until they are roughly lined up along that line.

  3. Wrong size. That you need to buy new shoes for.

Most “quality” in bike shoes is about the stiffness of the sole and quality of the tightening apparatus. Neither effect comfort overmuch.

2 Likes
43

Which part of the cleat, The aft edge, center or leading edge?

1 Like
44

Another tip is to ride in the little ring up front, mid cassette. That lowers the flywheel speed, allowing the Kickr to respond to cadence/intensity changes more quickly.

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45

Depends on the cleat. But for all cleats, you want the part of the cleat that rests along the center of the pedal spindle (when clipped in) to run along the center of the ball of your foot. Some people like it a little forward or back from that, but my fitter told me that lining it up as described is a good starting point for most people.

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46

Another way to get the cleat position right is to use a cleat positioning tool - the one I’ve used is from Ergon (search for Ergon TP1 Shimano SPD SL on Amazon, for example), but afaik other brands are available. A little more expensive, but if you don’t have a decent local bike shop to help you it could be worth it.

(And you really do need to get the cleat position right - I was doing daily Sufferfest workouts during the first lockdown last year, using some road pedals+shoes. I didn’t realise the cleat had slightly slipped, and of course after a couple of weeks I ended up with knee pain…)

47

I’d never heard of this. Sounds cool. I looked on their website and they have tools for a variety of cleat types.

Ergon

48

Thanks for tip. I’ll give it a try.

49

If you are using Keo cleats, there is a line on the cleat that you should use. My fitters all recommended putting the cleat on, then tightening it and going for a ride. If you feel you are ballet dancing, move the cleat forward 1 mm at a time until you feel full foot pressure. Same if you feel your heel is dropping when you try to put power on the downstroke. This is a real balancing act. Next is if you feel pressure on the inside or outside of your knee. This will require assistance from a professional fitter if you are not using Speedplay. Speedplay have (had) instructions on how to adjust ‘tilt’ on their site or there are YouTube videos.