I’ve started wearing cycle shoes on the daily commute. I know, I
know, cycle-specific clothing: the horror! The elitism! The automatic
disqualification from the Cycle Chic Club!
 |
| Cycle shoes and professional slacks: does not compute? |
I
didn’t want to enjoy wearing cycle shoes. But after a few months of commuting
and general hauling on the Yuba, my right leg, which I habitually use to start
off my first pedal stroke, developed a sore knee that wouldn’t go away and a
hamstring so tight that no remedy would loosen it. I tried
everything—stretching, ibuprofen, changing my cadence up and down, switching
out the leg I used to start pedaling from a standstill. Nothing helped.
Finally,
in desperation, I dug out the Shimano SPD shoes I’d bought years ago in a brief
flirtation with with Serious Cycling™. The bolt-in cleats and matching pedals
had long been given away after I discovered that they hurt more than they
helped, but I kept the shoes for those rare occasions when I felt the need for
a little more pedaling efficiency (even if the gain was mostly psychosomatic).
Thankfully,
this pair of cycle shoes was designed for on- and off-bike wear (they might
have been marketed as “touring” shoes back in the day?) and they looked more
like a pair of trail running shoes than yak leather Fred Flippers.
The
difference became apparent after just a few days’ riding, and it was amazing. The
pain and tightness went away almost entirely.
Though
I was delighted that the pain had gone away, I felt disappointed and even a
little worried that the solution had been to use what I consider “specialized
bike clothing”. Do SPD shoes undermine the “ordinary person on a bike” image I aim
to project in my everyday riding? Would a stranger looking at me think he or
she had to buy special shoes to ride a bike?
On the
other hand, sacrificing comfort and utility to conform to an ideology—any of
the many that members of the cycling community subscribe to—is just silly. Grand
Unified Theories of how to dress are valuable only so long as they offer more
freedom, not more constraints.
And
maybe I should take my clothing choices a little less seriously, too. After
all, someone who owns a massive orange cargo bike with color-matched milk
crates has already jumped the shark on “specialized biking equipment”, don’t
you think?
