Safety and Cycling Shoes

[Grog]

How about this. Let's say you bring an extra tube on a long solo ride, and during that ride, due to an unfortunate event, you get a flat and use the spare tube. Then, about eight walkable miles from home, you flat again. Now you've got no choice but to walk eight miles in shoes designed not to be walked in.

You should have a full patch kit, a pump, and the skills to use both (and other related equipment) to begin with.

It's indeed a matter of safety.

One single extra tube just doesn't do the trick.

[SouthernBelle]

I also can't run in heels. If I was broken down on the side of the road, in heels and a straight skirt, I would be in just as much danger. But these are basically my work clothes.

One should take reasonable precautions, but I can't live by 'what ifs.' I do have Halt on my bars and would use it.

[Grog]

I also can't run in heels.

Sorry for the hijack (it's my week for hijacking):

I always half-joked that heels and purses are a conspiracy against women to keep them under control. Can't run with heels (and generally we're a bit less stable than with flat shoes), can't do much with your hands if holding a purse. Try escaping a building on fire with heels (or, worse, barefoot). (Plus: loosing a few precious seconds grabbing the purse, in case it's a false alarm, instead of just having a wallet in one's pockets).

I had never seen bike shoes in that light... But now that I think about it, I would probably take my mtb pedals and shoes with recessed cleats if touring in an unknown area away from urban services...

However for every-day riding I'll keep my road shoes.

[Meg McKilty]

One should take reasonable precautions, but I can't live by 'what ifs.'

Here, here!

If you get attacked, think about what you would do so you know. Being a medical professional, one MUST take action; there are no spare seconds.

Think the same way when something may happen: you've got shoes with hard cleats sticking out of the bottom of them and carbon soles, you've got a hard helmet, you have a bike if you can manage to get behind it and swing it around (one can always buy a new bike).

Last but not least, all good boxers know you always have your fists. Don't give up the good fight. I refuse to live in fear of people and things.

[KnottedYet]

I don't wear high heels.

I don't wear road shoes.


If I can't run across a street in it, I ain't wearing it.

(am I the only one who remembers the piles of women's high heeled shoes ditched during Sept 11th and during the continent-wide black out a couple years later? There's a reason...)