Shoe upgrade performance test

[vander]

The change was seriously intense.

Training is like that sometimes.

About the strava segments with a powermeter I have had similar time (within about 5sec of a couple of mine) with about a 20-25% difference between the powers produced.

[sb944]

The wind was up and not ideal for the national park run, but it does wind around a bit, so it's possibly not that bad. Everything felt amazing, these shoes LOVE high cadence compared with the old ones. I was having too much fun to worry about wind or hills, 7 minutes flew by in the click of a finger, even the final tough hill into the wind before the downwind hill to the finish felt easier than ever. It was a PB, and a new KOM. Only 3 seconds quicker over 8:49, and with the wind it's hard to truly judge, but another PB down.

I also set a small PB on strava, even after getting slowed by cars at the intersection, which is usually enough to eliminate a good effort on that segment. Just checking, I peaked at 44km/h on that segment vs 38km/h last PB I set there! This morning I also set a PB up a longer upbhill segment by 15 seconds, though you need lights to go your way, which they did today.

Still nothing conclusive, but I've set 4 PB's and am in the top 5 on strava on all of them now, so something is going well since putting these shoes on. I think it's next week now before I try some of these segments again, early weather reports suggest I'll have perfect winds to try the 2 segments I did yesterday.

[sb944]

I saw today as the best opportunity for the shoes to prove themselves, fresh legs after a couple of days rest, perfect wind behind, often I get my PB's on a Monday afternoon ride. Only the wind was in my face once I got out there, and wasn't likely, but was completely stopped by 3 cyclists riding slowly right across the 3 lanes of bike/ped path on the freeway sprint. By the time I got down the bottom of the hill, the wind had changed, and it felt like it might even be right behind, no excuses now. It was purely effortless climbing that today, and had easily my best sprint after the tough bit, comparing a 37km/h peak vs 34 of my previous PB's on this segment. That made for a 1:22, 5 seconds better than my previous PB, 4th overall now. I'm not doubting some performance increase is due to the shoes now, though it's still very hard to say how much.

I'm going to try the national park route once more with hopefully a favourable wind tomorrow, and see if I can't shave some more seconds, and pretty much wrap this up I think.

[sb944]

I'm wrapping up this test. I'd set PB's on all my segments, and was going to have a better run at the national park on Tuesday, but it was raining when I left home, so took the cheap bike and shoes out in the rain. Yesterday I did manage one PB up a hill that took me from the teens to 7th on strava, without really trying it as a segment, just spinning hard up it. I also had a go at the national park, but not the same longer route this time, as the wind was playing up, so I thought that route might be better. I did manage a 7 second PB there, on a 7:40 segment, which isn't bad, but only 1.5% decrease overall.

So, I did get all my PB's I tried in the week since getting the new shoes, and I think that shows a performance boost, although only one segment was over 3% reduction in time, so it's still slightly debatable. With the biggest time reduction of 5%, it's unlikely going from even cheap clipless shoes to premium ones results in anything above 2-3% at most, with all that lovely carbon under your foot rather than rubber.

What I have noticed is much higher top speeds on my segments, sometimes in the order of 13%, often close to 10%. It's theoretically possible the shoes are allowing me to go 12% quicker as a max speed, but the drawback is my legs and lungs aren't fit enough to handle that extra speed increase, so the overall segment times are only slightly better off. I'm not sure what I think about that theory, but in that case I'm very happy, as I can play catch up with my legs and lungs now.

But there are many other pluses. No matter what type of trip, the bottom of my feet are very noticably more relaxed after a ride now. So much so, it feels like I rode in the old shoes, then got a foot massage after the ride. Also high cadence is a dream in these. I've started spinning up hills I used to stand on, and beating my PB's doing that (eg yesterdays hill), which I couldn't do before. In fact my habits are rapidly changing from standing up all steep hills for power, to spinning for speed, and standing only to break things up, mainly on shorter sections where there is a change of gradiant. I love that. Also, I tried my first "fast" bunch ride in these shoes today, which usually goes OK, buts ends with my ankle and knees feeling a little tender. Both feel great so far, which is 80% of why I wanted to upgrade my shoes, to avoid slowly deteriorating my knees and ankles as I do more kms at higher speeds in the future.

Hope this helps someones choice in the future.

[Xplora]

That reflects my experience exactly... higher top speeds clearly demonstrate less foot stress on the slower sections and less power loss from shoe flex but you're right, the legs still have to spin the kms out and you won't get a solid response to the training effect for a while.

I'm NOT feeling more comfort though. Poor feet are getting slaughtered out there

[AKO]

I'm in the same boat as you Xplora. The new Sidis aren't being kind to my feet. I swapped insoles from my LG MTB shoes for yesterday's ride and while better they still weren't perfect. I'll just keep playing around with cleat position and strap tensions etc.