Remember those Shimano M56789-m86L2-whatever shoes?  Well, they didn’t work out as well as I would have hoped.  After three months of use, I came to the conclusion that they just didn’t fit and the searing foot and toe pain wasn’t going to work out in the long term.  I believe the problems I was having all relate to the shape of the toe box.  The Shimanos have a very low and very tapered toe which was creating a lot of pressure on my toes on long rides.

After searching and looking into several different shoes, I decided to go back to a shoe that I’d previously used, a Specialized MTB Comp.  Actually, I had my eye on the MTB Pro, but the Comp was on sale at a local shop for about half the cost od the Pro.  Anyway, I had a pair of Specialized MTB Comp shoes from the late 90s or so, and they were great.  Like my old pair, these new shoes have a very tall and square toe box as well as a very comfortable insole.

I’ve ridden a couple weeks and several hundred kilometers of road and off-road riding in these shoes, and I am quite happy.  I don’t have any complaints at this stage, and I’m confident that these shoes will do well in my enduro race this weekend.

I still have some foot pain lingering from the Shimano shoes, but it is slowly fading away, and I can almost wear my regular street shoes without hobbling!  Here are some comparison shots of the Shimano and Specialized shoes:

I wasn’t too kind to my brakes in the last post.  Since then, the BB7s have received new Avid sintered pads and some completely unnecessary blue paint.  The red pad adjustment knobs on BB7s are bright, bright red, and in my case the only red on the bike.  Scroll down to see what one coat of plastic primer and two coats of automotive Mica Blue can do for your BB7s.

Yesterday I raced in the second XC race of the season, and the second race in the rain and mud.  While I suppose racing in the mud is “fun” it has been taking a toll on the bike.  The cables are less than a month old, but I’m fairly certain they are shot.  The chain has definitely looked and felt better, and the chainring is certainly showing its age.

However, the components that have been showing the most wear are the brakes.  Up until these two races the BB7s have performed flawlessly and required very little attention.  Prior to the first race I put new Avid sintered pads in the front, and checked that the rear (also sintered) pads were in good shape.  In the first race the front brake needed a couple of adjustments for worn pads, but nothing extreme considering the race was three hours long.  In this last one-and-a-half-hour race both brakes needed adjusting more than six times.  After that I stopped counting.  The results speak for themselves:

I’m not suggesting that other brakes wouldn’t have faired any better, but self-adjusting brakes (found on just about every hydraulic brake available) would have worked far better in these conditions.  Anyway, I’m looking forward to a dry summer.

Until then, here are some more of my photos from the comparatively-dry morning classes at the Prospect Hill XC Race: