Types of Mountain Bike Shoes

Video Transcript

"MICKEY DENONCOURT: You can choose different types of shoes for different types of writing styles and different writing conditions like weather, humidity, and stuff like that. I've got three different shoes right here, which are all for a different conditions and they don't even begin to cover the spectrum. This shoe is designed for heavy duty downhill riding, dirt jumping, really aggressive riding. You see it's got a pretty flat sole which is open and mates up well with the downhill style clipless pedal, there are no big knobs or anything that get in the way, and it's pretty durable. It's got a hard toe cup. There's a lace cover; it's a lace-up shoe. It's kind of heavy and would it be the first choice of shoe that you'd use for just general cross-country riding or road riding or something like that. You'd want to use a shoe cross-country race type shoe, which I don't have with me here right now. Another type of shoe that's for the exact same use but isn't designed for any sort of clipless pedal is this shoe from a company called 510. It uses a very sticky rubber sole designed originally for climbing. And this shoe is very, very grippy on these flat pedals. I mean, it almost just sticks. And there, you can see that the rubber, the rebound on the rubber is very slow, kind of like a high-end tire. It really just sticks in there and see how it going to takes to come back. These shoes are available in this high top version which is good. It covers your ankles, stuff like that, so you hit your ankles against the crank arms or rocks it helps a lot. In colder weather conditions for cross-country riding, you can get insulated shoes. They make these in both road versions and mountain bike versions. This is a mountain bike version. You can the sole here is designed except the cleat like we have in this downhill shoe. Toe studs can thread in here for traction off the bike. What you've got is you got a very durable, leather body that's water proof. A strap system, a [PH] Neoprene Gator, another insulated neoprene layer, and then under there there's also some laces. So these shoes are pretty specific. I live in the Northeastern United States, so I'm maybe get to use these 20 or 30 days a year. But they're really good to have because I want to be riding those 20 or 30 days. So it's always nice to be able to get out there. So other types of shoes that you have, with the flat pedal, you can ride in just a general shoe if you want to. With the more road-oriented clipless pedals or cross-country oriented clipless pedals, you can ride in a super lightweight shoe but just basically just mesh a little bit of leather and some straps, so choose your shoe based on what you want to do and go from there."