Here’s an update about the DZR shoes and my new SPD (Touring) pedals.

Older readers will remember that, last entry, I gave up on the 3-bolt type cleats/pedals/shoes and decided to revert to my DZR hipster shoes and change the pedals on my bike for SPD pedals. I thought I’d got the best of both worlds, because I got touring-type pedals, with a bigger platform. It turned out, however, that the recess in the DZR shoes isn’t big enough for the bigger pedal platform.

Option 1 was to return the pedals and get some with a smaller platform. Option 2 was to get out the old craft knife and viciously hack out a bigger recess, which is what I did. You can see the result above, in the recreation of the marketing photo on the previous post.

Well, it’s not pretty, but it kind of works. I went out this weekend for a couple of rides. Apart from not knowing quite yet where to set the foot so the cleats engage first time (which I will get used to eventually), the cleats engage with the pedals, don’t feel as tight on my feet as my previous two pairs of shoes (Specialized and Shimano, respectively), and they don’t slip out of the pedals. I even managed to disengage without falling off.

I’m getting a little bit of a hot spot on the ball of my right foot, but the right foot has always been more of a problem than the left (think it’s a bit bigger/wider/higher).

I’d buy the DZR shoes again. I don’t like that I’ve had to hack into the soles so much, so I might one day have to opt for yet another set of pedals, but hopefully that decision is at least a year away.

By the way, you may be wondering about the laces, and how to avoid getting them caught in the chain set. There’s a little grey elastic tab which you can tuck them under. It’s easy to forget to do this, though, so my laces do have blackened ends. The tab works, but you can also buy DZRs with velcro fastening.
Update: since a number of people reach this blog searching for information about cycling shoes and why they hurt their feet, I should point out that, while the DZRs were fine-ish for shorter rides (an hour), they became desperately painful on any ride over two hours. So I gave up on them and bought some Bontrager multisport shoes, which are much better. I went for one size bigger than my normal shoe size, and have suffered much less with my feet.

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• my problem with cycling shoes (frequentlyarsed.wordpress.com)