As someone who finds myself often doing the bike commute to work with more ‘stuff’ then the average commuter* and as a nerd who needs to look presentable at work but very rarely needs to actually dress up for the office I found myself in the market for a shoe that I could ride to work in and then wear all day at work without looking like crap. I’ve tried on quite a few cycling shoes of various varieties in my life and most that try to fulfill dual purposes fall painfully short on at least one of their goals. All of the previous shoes like these that I have owned or tried where either too stiff to walk comfortably in, had too much cleat exposed or were too flexible to get much power transfer out of on the bike. These do both quite well, on the bike they arguably flex less then an average entry-level road shoe would but yet are comfortable enough to walk in that I sometimes forget that I’m not wearing normal shoes even when walking a mile or more.

Putting them to the test in the real world

Chicago commute

These shoes are significantly water resistant and are noticeably warmer then any other shoe I’ve used in the cold (but I’ve never broken down and used full cold weather cycling boots). Granted this winter has been a bit of a wimpy winter as far as the normally crappy Chicago wither weather goes, but in combination with a quality warm sock (usually smartwool) I’ve used them in various combinations of cold, wind, rain, snow and slop yet unlike the rest of me in all cases my feet stayed warm and dry.

They also have thus far shown no visible harm by the salt, road gunk and other crap that they end up covered in and they clean up easily with a damp towel to quickly be presentable at work. I’ve only had them a few months so it’s too early to say for sure how well these hold up over time, but they still appear basically new so I’m hopeful that these to last quite a while.