Cycling Shoe - Sole Material and Shoe Quality

Sole Material and Shoe Quality

Soles for cycling shoes are usually divided into three categories. Inexpensive shoes mostly use an injection-molded plastic sole, which is economical but heavier and prone to flexing. Mid-range shoes may use a combination of plastic and carbon fibre, plastic and fibreglass, or an all carbon fibre sole. All manufacturers' high-end competition level shoes manufactured post-2002 use carbon fibre soles. The sole material and amount of tread used in a shoe affects its weight; an expensive pair of road shoes with carbon fibre soles can weigh 650 grams, while a budget-priced pair of mountain bike shoes might weigh 850 to 900 grams.

Some mountain bike shoes have a little engineered flex in the toe area forward of the cleat mount. This assists in walking and in climbing obstacles while carrying the bike. More expensive shoes usually have less frontal flex.

Read more about this topic:  Cycling Shoe

Famous quotes containing the words sole, material, shoe and/or quality:

    Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    Technological change defines the horizon of our material world as it shapes the limiting conditions of what is possible and what is barely imaginable. It erodes ... assumptions about the nature of our reality, the “pattern” in which we dwell, and lays open new choices.
    Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)

    I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker’s to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour ... was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    We’re headed for collapse, if you want my opinion, Missy. I can see it in the fallin’ off of the quality of vagrants. There was a time you could find real good company in almost any jungle you’d pick, men who could talk, men who’d read a book now and then; and now, what do you find, a lot of dirty little guttersnipes no decent tramp would want to associate with.
    Well, it’s been that way all through history.
    John Dos Passos (1896–1970)