"All of those acting lessons have paid off now!"
For OJ Simpson it was a glove, for cyclists it’s their shoes.
You remember…Johnnie Cochran chanting ‘If it don’t fit, you must acquit’. Well, poor ole OJ struggled and struggled to get those shrunken gloves onto his hands. It was a ‘no go’ and the jurors realized that if OJ couldn’t get his bloated hands (three cheers for swollen hands due to no arthritis medication for a few days) into shrunken gloves (they’d been completely soaked in blood), he must have been framed…and should be allowed to go free to pursue the real criminals who’d committed the bloody crimes.
We cyclists have a parallel problem…if our cycling shoes don’t fit, we’ll want to quit.
"I'm thankful I'm not wearing tight cycling shoes."
In an effort to get my bike shoes to fit snugly onto my feet, at times I’ve just about strangled them into submission by tightening the closure to near suffocation status. And I can tell you, when that happens you’ll want to whimper like a spray-painted poodle.
But as the video at the end of this post points out, the snugness shouldn’t be in the closure, Instead, it should be in the way the shoe fits ‘organically’.
Nah, ‘organically’ has nothing to do with pesticide-free carrots, beets, or other tubers. It actually has nothing to do with just about anything from the vegetable kingdom.
When I speak of ‘organic’ cycling shoe fitting, I speak of the kind of fit that comes from…well, I’m not sure of what I speak. This is going no where; the only saving grace being that no one ever reads this blog anyway.
Let’s get back on track.
Get some insoles that fit your feet, buy a shoe that fits tightly from side to side (I don’t actually like this ‘tight’ advise, since it’s ruined many a ride for me), and when it doesn’t work out all that well for you, give Victor at Bicyclelab.com a holler.
Victor did a follow-up video regarding the proper length of shoe, in which he clarified the relationship of the front of the toe with the shoe. The toe should only be ‘brushing’ the toe of the shoe.
Not jammed up against it.
There will be a bit of swelling of the foot during a long ride, making any toe discomfort worse as the miles tick away.
Let’s see, what else? I have a pair of the Specialized shoes that have the ratcheted cable closure that Victor is demonstrating on the Lake shoes. I liked them for a long time…and then the ratcheting device failed.
I ordered the replacement ratchets, but even though I have a super-handyman skillset, I gave up on succesfully repairing them a couple of years ago.
I’ll bet that if I were to try on those old shoes, I’d have a terrible time trying to fit into them. Of course that may acquit me from having to go on a ride that day.
If OJ wasn’t in jail for ‘strong-arming’, I’d give him a call to see if he wanted to play golf.
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I came from a frenetic (I just wanted to use that word, regardless of accuracy) running background. When I decided that the cycling world had gone long enough without my participation, I decided to get a coach and start bike racing.
I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time over the last few months writing articles about bike trainers. What Al Gore is to global warming…I am to 
One of the most ‘searched for’ pages on my site is the 
Today John, from Performance Bike, teaches us the skill set needed to adjust a rear derailleur. But never wanting to skimp when it comes to my readers, I’ve personally requested that he provide ‘something extra’.
I was wandering through You Tube looking for important videos on bike repair. The cycling season’s coming up and it’ll be nice to be able to keep the bike rolling without having to take it into the pros every time there’s a little blip on the bike-functioning radar screen.
