Do Road shoes really make much difference ?

[buggi]

Crack on with what you've got. i've got MTB (slim road like shoes) and Road shoes and just MTB (SPuDs) pedals. i bought a little convertor thing off wiggle so i could put MTB cleats on my road shoes. my MTB and Road shoes are made by the same manufacturer and the only difference is the tread on the bottom, you can't really tell the difference at a quick glance. they are as stiff as each other.
some people say you get more surface area with the road pedal (rather than MTB pedal) but i've never found this a problem. the shoe is stiff so you don't feel anything through the bottom! i dunno what the hell they are talking about. also, on my trip to paris, every day the ones with road shoes were complaining their feet hurt. mine didn't.

if you're feet are cold, try neoprene over shoes rather than two layers of socks. much better.

 

[gaz]

Rule #34

 

[cyberknight]

I would have thought the shoes, I used m520's for a long time and never had a shoe problem, although I was not cycling as much as I do now. In fact my shoes always out lasted the m520 pedals.

Bought some decathlon "5" shoes that seem a lot better this month rather than spending the same every year in aldi specials that break, not worn them much yet and i still need to dial the seat height in a bit with change in stack height.

 

[HLaB]

I do most of my riding with spd touring pedals and a stiffered soled mtb shoe (spesh bg mtb sport) and occasionally I wear carbon soled road shoes and spd-sl pedals and there's not much difference between them IMO; the ability to more comfortably walk into cafe's in spd's wins for me

 

[Lee_M]

Bought some decathlon "5" shoes that seem a lot better this month rather than spending the same every year in aldi specials that break, not worn them much yet and i still need to dial the seat height in a bit with change in stack height.

do you like to change your shoes a lot then?

Keeping buying cheap shoes seems to me to not be cost effective

I bought a pair of specialized road shoes about 5 years ago, and they're still going strong.

ok I paid £150 for them but that's £30 per year - and expect them to last a lot more years yet

 

[Sittingduck]

I use both and prefer SPD-SL for country jaunts and SPD for commuting. Hot spots can be an issue, with SPD shoes, in warm weather but imho, it's as much as to do with the width of the shoe, than the contact area if the cleat. That being said, I do find that SPD-SL 'feel better' when clipped-in and putting the power down. but it's fairly marginal.

 

[Mile195]

do you like to change your shoes a lot then?

Keeping buying cheap shoes seems to me to not be cost effective

I bought a pair of specialized road shoes about 5 years ago, and they're still going strong.

ok I paid £150 for them but that's £30 per year - and expect them to last a lot more years yet

I've just bought a new pair of Specialized, but my last pair were Shimano. They were £25 second-hand off ebay, I did three years on them and they've still got some life in them. They were probably about 3 years old already when I bought them, so for what would have been a £120 ish pair of shoes when new, that's maybe 7 years of use. So it is true I agree - you get what you pay for.

 

[Cycleops]

I've got a pair of Shimano spd shoes which ate great, only problem is theu are hellishly heavy compared to my cheap Shimano road shoes.

 

[cyberknight]

do you like to change your shoes a lot then?

Keeping buying cheap shoes seems to me to not be cost effective

I bought a pair of specialized road shoes about 5 years ago, and they're still going strong.

ok I paid £150 for them but that's £30 per year - and expect them to last a lot more years yet

The decathons were £54 with a 2 year guarantee, the aldi shoes i think were £20 and i broke 2 pairs in a year.I do not like to change shoes its just my awsome power is snapping them

 

[Lee_M]

The decathons were £54 with a 2 year guarantee, the aldi shoes i think were £20 and i broke 2 pairs in a year.

Decathlon make some good gear, half my cupboard is full of their jerseys

 

[zizou]

You can get mountain bike shoes just as stiff as road shoes, you can also get ones much more flexible, really depends on the shoe.

I have both spd and spd-sl and it is hard to quantify but i feel a bit more connected to the bike with spd-sl - particularly when cornering during a fast descent and sprinting. Over the course of a longer ride i dont notice any difference in terms of average speed and things like that though it is just at the extremes.

They do have different amounts of supporting surface area, even XTR's vary, the m970 has less than the m980.
My MTB has m520's and they are less supporting, my M324's on my ice bike have more support than my m520's.
I recently, as in last week, changed my main commuter from XT's to XTR's(£71 from Ribble), not only can I feel a difference I can see it when I directly compare.

Its not really comparing like with like - is M324 not a one sided spd with a flat on the other side whereas the M520 is dual sided spd?

Also XTR pedals come in two types - a xc version and a trail version with a cage. What shoes you wear is going to impact what 'support' you have if using the caged version. A XC racer with shoes as stiff as a road shoe is going to use the standard version, they will get no benefit from the cage and the support comes from the stiff sole of their shoe whereas someone going trail riding will likely be wearing more flexible shoes so get the benefit of the cage, particularly if the cleat is recessed.

 

[henshaw11]

Since spds came out, in order I've had a selection of mtb shoes : Shimano (<12months);Sidi (6yrs);Specialized (2 yrs); Sidi(10+ yrs and counting). I've only just started wearing a new but unused pair of Sidi Dominators that I bought s/h off a guy about 7 yrs ago - mainly cos the treads on the older Sidis are so worth that my overshoes keep getting walking damage, whereas the unwork treads on the new set keep the overshoe mostly off the floor. But the old shoes will come out again when the weather improves - the uppers are still in really good nick.

The Sidis are nice and stiff ( but to be fair the road equivalents might be slightly stiffer..) - and in terms of value for money are streets ahead of the others I've tried (but to be fair the modern-day equivalents of the others are probably better)

(All of the 1st 3 pairs started to suffer from baseplate - ie sole - cracking around the cleat on the rearmost bunnyhop foot. Shows I'm rubbish it doing bunnyhops properly.. )

 

[antnee]

SPD's for me as I couldn't see the logic of buying two different types of pedal over the two bikes I have Ok If you have perhaps an unlimited budget then you can afford to have different for each bike i.e. SPD SL for the road bike and MTB SPD's for your hybrid or mountain bike. I invested in some reasonable shoes that suited me and hope that at £53.45 they will last a while.
As to the area of contact that is mentioned in a earlier post I perhaps can see that the SPD SL would have a better clip fixing and bigger surface fixing area than the SPD MTB but the difference between actual MTBSPD's pedals! I can't see as are not all the pedal clip sizes the same so that the two fixing style bolted cleat is a universal fixing? Perhaps I'm missing something but I do have PDSPD M520's on the road bike and SPD MTB shimarno A530's on the hybrid.
this is just my take on the matter and not "definitely the last word lol"
Regards to all Antnee

 

[Kies]

I have spd's for my hybrid and road shoes on my road bike. Wouldn't have it any other way

 

[DooDah]

Yes.