I recently purchased a new set of cycling shoes. To the un-bike obsessed, that sentence doesn’t sound like a big deal, but to the bike people of the world, getting new shoes is ONE OF THE BIGGEST DEALS OF ALL. This is because the biggest contacts points for a bike are the three Esses: shoes, saddle and shifters. (Really it’s handlebars and shifters together, but I wanted some alliteration to go on, so I went with shifters, and I mean integrated shifters, not down tubes shifters or whatever mountain bikers use. I write this aside because bike people are tremendously pedantic—ask any bike person about how high their socks should rise on their legs, and then I defy you to not want to walk into traffic.)

Changing a contact point for a cyclist is big deal, because it alters your relationship with your bike. In my case, my old shoes were so worn out that I’m actually renewing my relationship with my bike. My old shoes (the brand shall go unnamed because I like to torture bike nerds) had a combination of Boa laces (Boa laces, for the un-bike people, are laces that work on a ratcheting system that tightens a string made of a composite material) and velcro straps. And I will now state before God and Ned Overend that I will never go back to velcro ever again. 

Velcro in itself is not a bad material, it’s great for ensuring your toddler never learns to tie a proper bunny ear knot, but when it comes to keeping cycling shoes snugly attached, they are hooked and looped garbage. By the end of the life of my previous cycling shoes, the velcro straps were mostly ornamental. Actually, they were less than ornamental as they wouldn’t stay hooked together and would flutter in the wind as I pedaled along. The Boa laces, on the other hand, were perfectly fine, keeping their section of my foot snugly attached, and I feel bad having to sacrifice them to the trash bin because the velcro straps couldn’t hold up their end of the bargain. Ned speed, my little Boas! We shall meet again!

I began my search for velcro-free footwear. If I’m honest, I never really considered anything other than a two Boa set up. There are shoes out there with traditional laces, and they tend to look quite cool in their own retro way, but the thing with laces is that one you tie them, you aren’t able to make changes as you ride. The lace tightness you commit to at the start of your ride is the tightness you are stuck with, and you have to live with that decision—it’s like ordering fish tacos at a chicken restaurant in Kansas or entering into a bad relationship—because that decision has ramifications down the road. Boa laces, on the other hand can be easily tightened or loosened while you ride. My feet tend to get svelter as my rides progress, so this is a real big bonus for me, especially if I have to get home after a fish taco binge in Kansas.

I found my shoes (again, I will not mention the brand, because of my aforementioned love of torturing bike nerds and I really have no desire to debate bands and such in the comments section), they are a double Boa set up (spoiler alert), and are black because I cannot keep white shoes clean. I found that I needed insoles for my shoes as they were a little loose, so I went to my doctor friend, maybe you’ve heard of him? Dr Scholls. Yeah, I use CVS insoles, because why not? I can cut them up and not feel terrible about mangling a set of $200 insoles. The doctor is very forgiving. I’ve had a couple of trainer rides to get my cleat position worked out, and things seem very good. I find that most shoes take a breaking-in period, and that will be the next few weeks for me as I need to get the shoe uppers worked in.

Now it’s time for a few tacos rides, and things will be all set, what could go wrong?