Bontrager Shoe Reviews – Part 1

(or How To: Bike Quickly, Look Good and Feel Like a Superstar)

Due to the generosity of The Village Cycle, my sister Alison and I now own new cycling shoes. Clearly, we are both excited about this, since we both wanted to write about them as soon as possible. We decided to make this a two-part series for two different perspectives on Bontrager cycling shoes.

So, without further ado, I give you Alison with her Bontrager Street WSD Shoes:

Bontrager Street WSD Shoes  (On Sale!)

Thanks to the Village Cycle I acquired a second pair of clipless biking shoes. And I must say, they are working out quite a bit better than the first pair. Here are a few reasons I particularly like them.

You go faster. I own two bikes: a Myata road bike I picked up at a garage sale 6 years ago for $20 and a french Mercier, granny-inspired bike from the 1970s (it was my mom's). The combo of the Myata bike with the Bontrager clipless shoes has pretty consistently cut my commuting time down by about 7 minutes for 4.5 miles, although I then have to shower when I get to work since I was actually able to work up a sweat so it's kind of a wash.

They are fashionable. I rode/wore them to Alamo shoes to try on regular, non-biking shoes and the shoe sales guy complimented them (or me for wearing them I guess) then a minute later asked "oh, wait, are those bike shoes?" so apparently it didn't immediately turn on the bike-dork radar, which was fine with me. Also, they are simple enough that it's easy to wear them around work if necessary and I have been known to have them on at a street festival or two this summer.

If you don't fall a bunch, you feel like a super star. I know this because the first time I used my first set of Bontrager clipless shoes (not fashionable ones mind you) I most definitely DID NOT feel like a super star. Several acquaintances at work had invited me to join them for a 40 + mile round trip to Wolf Lake on a Saturday morning, and me, wanting to try out my new clipless shoes and train for the Apple Cider Century, agreed to join them. 

Everything was fine until I got to the South Shore Cultural Center where, instead of asking an armed security guard where the bathroom was (my intention), I rode up to the cop-like guy, stopped my bike and promptly proceeded to fall into both him and his side holster and gun. Luckily there was an extremely large group of volunteers sitting and watching the whole thing and they were quick to ask why the heck had I tried to mall the guy. Trying to explain the physics and reasoning behind clipless pedals to them, at that point, didn't work. That was the first and probably most dramatic of the approximately eight splendid crashes I had that day while trying to start and stop my bike all over Chicago's south side. Somehow my coworkers still talked to me afterwards, but my street cred was pretty low. Luckily, so far, the new Bontragers have been easier to get in and out of and (knock on wood) I haven't had any spills in them yet.

*For more comprehensive information from the professionals, The Village Cycle has an awesome page here