New Shoes!

 I bought new cycling shoes on Wednesday.  I'm just getting around to writing about it now, but I am pumped.  I know some people are going to go, "That's nice John move on," others will make comparisons to women getting excited about shoes.  Truth is I have always hated buying shoes.  I have pretty narrow feet, when you're a man with narrow feet you just give up on choice, you'll get what they have or can order and you'll be happy.  If you're lucky.

So here you go.  Pretty normal looking aren't they.

Don't be fooled.

As hard as it may be for you to believe, I still have a little pooch at the right toe box, but these shoes actually fit (ok mostly, but I can reef the toe box down.  I used to buy Sidi 46 narrows and they fit pretty well, I can't recall now if it was better or as good at this point, but I haven't been able to get them since my last pair broke the arch strap.  I thought, "OK, I can get by with a 46 regular.  They were OK, and I can use them in the winter with thicker socks, but had foot cramps pretty regularly.  When you looked at those the pooch on both shoes was pretty  pronounced, and I could always spot the void at the instep of the right shoe.  It meant I could never really get my foot properly placed and probably added to some power loss.

So, I like the shoes.  Oddly reviews have said the footbed is wider, the toe box is spoon shaped and it fits people with high arches best.   None of those scenarios would fit my foot, so maybe the reviewer has even narrower feet.

I've only ridden these 42 miles on the trainer so far.  It doesn't have quite the analytics that the Vector pedals do so tomorrow I'll take them on the road and see if the pedals change the Platform Center Offset.  No one seems to be able to say what it means, but mine has been asymmetric possibly due to my broken ankle.  Still it will be interesting to see if they alter the cycling dynamics overall.

The Power phase has moved, but that could be due to the difference in the measuring device (trainer as opposed to pedals.) 

This is from a metric century on Tuesday.

And this is from a tempo ride on the trainer today.

I'm suspicious because the trainer never has me getting past the TDC or BDC on the overall power.

So stand by.  I'll probably only do about 20 miles on my same old route, and that's only a 1/3 of the metric century, but it should tell me more about how the shoe/pedal/John system works IRL.