{"id":254490,"date":"2026-07-24T14:13:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T14:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/24\/the-old-soft-shoe\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T14:13:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T14:13:17","slug":"the-old-soft-shoe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/24\/the-old-soft-shoe\/","title":{"rendered":"The Old Soft Shoe"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Barefoot cycling?<\/p>\n

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Sure, people do it<\/a>, but is it, like, a thing?<\/p>\n

Well, it could be<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Because people are now realizing the footbinding tradition that has dominated cycling for at least the last three decades (super stiff, super snug, etc.) is not optimal for performance:<\/p>\n

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Not only can having stronger, more comfortable feet benefit overall health, but as founder at the eponymous\u00a0Phil Burt Innovation\u00a0and former Head of Physiotherapy Burt explains, getting the most out of your feet can drastically improve power output, a discovery he made ahead of the Rio Olympics.<\/em><\/p>\n

Having created custom, moulded shoes for track riders, he discovered \u201cquite amazing uplifts in power,\u201d something he put down to the fact that \u201cthe foot, all of a sudden, wasn\u2019t wiggling around in the shoe\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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Coming into my own as a Fred, I always took for granted that when it came to cycling shoes, stiffer was better. No, I didn\u2019t seek out the stiffest shoe I could or anything like that, but I also didn\u2019t have to, because all of them were pretty stiff, and you\u2019d have to go out of your way to find a pair that wasn\u2019t. It was the writing of Grant Petersen that made me realize that the whole stiff shoe thing doesn\u2019t make any sense, and while I don\u2019t have time to find where exactly he explains it, I seem to recall the example that really drove it home for me was that you don\u2019t need a stiff sole to walk up a flight of stairs, so why the hell do you need one to sprint on a bicycle?<\/p>\n

Clearly more and more people are also realizing this, and it\u2019s creating an exciting new business opportunity for the enterprising cordwainer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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No doubt the Fred Set will soon take notice, because while they may not listen to some guy who paints his own pedals<\/a> and is arguably overenthusiastic about twine, they always stand ready to Follow The Science:<\/p>\n

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As a graduate student at the University of Colorado, Tripp Hurt co-authored two scientific papers on cycling shoe stiffness, examining how that stiffness affected sprint performance. The conclusion of both studies: It doesn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNinety-nine percent of people, (a stiff shoe) does not give any performance benefit \u2026 there\u2019s no benefit,\u201d said Hurt, a former top runner whose degree is in mechanical engineering. After college he worked as a biomechanist at the Brooks running shoe brand before starting Brevay, a cycling shoe brand, with partners.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Of course the most effective real world solution to harnessing the power of toe splay and maximizing your foot\u2019s biomechanics while riding the bike is probably to just use flat pedals and wear sneakers. But this is cycling we\u2019re talking about and sorry, that\u2019s not gonna fly. So you can expect to see a flood of $5,000 clipless finger-toe monstrosities soon:<\/p>\n

\"Cyclist's<\/figure>\n

[The image above is 100% AI, because I am part of the problem.]<\/p>\n

Or, perhaps cycling shoes will evolve into ultralight Kevlar mesh ballet flats, only with cleats:<\/p>\n

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[The above image is not AI, I just stole it.]<\/p>\n

At which point we have finally come full circle:<\/p>\n

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[Also stolen.]<\/p>\n

Just like with tires, which started out plump:<\/p>\n

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Got super skinny:<\/p>\n

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And have now fattened up again, much to the delight of cycling journalists who seem to enjoy nothing more than running around race starts with measuring calipers<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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\u201cOooh, this tire\u2019s 31.6mm.\u201d \u201cWait, this tire\u2019s 32.3 mm!\u201d Who cares?!? It almost makes me miss the days when all they cared about was weight.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the older I get the less certain I am about anything, and this is especially true when it comes to bikes. Mostlly, I\u2019ve just learned how little I know. However, after all these years, there are three things I have come to understand about cycling, and they are:<\/p>\n