Friday, February 13, 2009

New shoes

Annual review is done, I get to keep my job for a while, so I ordered some new shoes. My old road and mountain shoes are literally falling apart, and I've been eyeing new shoes for a while now. Interestingly, the shoes that I've been eyeing are not available anywhere in town, even though Spiuk sponsors our home town racing team, Kelly Benefit Strategies. Marketing fail. So I ordered them through the distributor, DPM Sports. I hope they fit.

One reason for not being in a hurry to get new shoes is that my old shoes were dialed in by an excellent fitter in Portland. They used the Fit Kit RAD cleat fitting system. This system in pure genius, especially compared with every other way of cleat fitting I've seen. I've seen fitters use lasers and all sorts of fancy contraptions to dial in fit, but then cleats get done using eyeballs and trial and error. The RAD system makes so much sense, and cleat alignment is crucial. Sure, you can go Speedplay and float all over the place, or you can trial and error it yourself, but once you've done it pro, you don't want to go back.

So who's the [wo]man for RAD cleat fitting in town? Or is there a good cleat fitting system or fitter out there that I'm not aware of?