Shoes and cleats: fit first, everything else after

Shoes are the only part of a bike you wear, and the contact point riders think about least until something hurts. They are also one of the few areas where an expensive product is not obviously better than a cheap one — because the thing that matters most is whether they fit your feet, and that is not a price question.

What actually matters in a shoe

1. Fit, by a distance. Length, width and volume. A shoe that is wrong for the shape of your foot will be uncomfortable at any price, and numb toes are far more often a fit problem than a circulation one.
2. Sole stiffness — up to a point. A stiff sole transmits power rather than flexing. Beyond a moderate level the returns are small and the comfort cost is real, especially on long rides.
3. Retention that holds without crushing. Dials are excellent because they adjust on the move; straps and laces both work perfectly well.
4. Ventilation, matched to your climate. A summer shoe in a Slovenian February is a mistake you make once.

Notice what is not on that list: weight, and carbon content. Both are heavily marketed and neither will affect your riding as much as a shoe that fits your foot properly.

Cleat position: small changes, one at a time

Cleat position affects how your knee tracks through every one of the thousands of pedal revolutions in a ride, which is why it is both worth getting right and worth being careful with.

Marking cleats before you move them

Before touching a cleat bolt, draw round the cleat with a fine marker. That gives you a free undo — and since some adjustments turn out to be worse, an undo is exactly what you want. Do the same before replacing worn cleats, so the new ones go back where the old ones were.

Worn cleats are an underrated problem in their own right. As they wear, float increases and engagement gets unreliable, and riders interpret the resulting vagueness as a fit problem. Replace them when the walking surfaces are visibly worn down, and replace them in pairs.

Road, gravel or two-bolt?

• Three-bolt road cleats: largest platform, best power transfer, and effectively unwalkable. Right for road riding and racing.
• Two-bolt mountain cleats: recessed, walkable, easier to clip in, and they shed mud. Right for gravel, touring, commuting, and anyone who stops at cafés, which is most people.
• Flat pedals: entirely legitimate. Plenty of strong riders use them, and the power penalty is far smaller than folklore suggests.

For an all-round rider who does one gravel ride a month and stops for coffee, two-bolt shoes are frequently the better choice despite road cleats being the default recommendation. Being able to walk into a café without clattering is worth more than a marginal difference in platform stiffness.

Indoor shoes, and the one thing to watch

Trainer sessions destroy shoes faster than road riding does, because sweat drips directly into them for an hour with no airflow to dry them out. Many riders keep an older pair specifically for indoors, which is sensible and cheap.

If you use one pair for both, dry them properly between sessions — out of the bag, laces or dial loosened, somewhere ventilated — and expect the hardware to corrode faster than you would like. That is the same sweat problem covered in smart trainer maintenance, and the same fix applies: a towel, and a wipe afterwards.

The rest of the setup matters too. Moveee Indoor runs your own routes in a browser tab, and pain cave setup covers the fan that will keep both you and your shoes considerably happier.