You know, when I was a kid the absolute worst thing you could do is to show up with a brand new, unscuffed, lilly white pair of sneakers. Ok, so I am not in love with the color. I mean how much geekier could you possibly be, unless of course you were caught with a pencil box, but I digress.... The CX 225's were delivered in a white and silver combo and boy are they white!

Once I managed to get over the color, it was time to mount up some cleats. The traditional road cleat triangle mounts are molded directly into the rigid sole of the shoe. Since I would be testing the CX 225's with SPD's I would need to take advantage the slots for SPD style mounting and the supplied backer plates for such mounting. It was necessary, however, to remove the insole and cut the access panel free from the fiberous liner between the insole and the rigid sole of the shoe. Once that was accomplished the rest of the mounting process was simple. Plenty of room was available for adjustment.



Time to ride out: These shoes are comfortable. Three velcro straps allow for easy adjustment, which made the supplied shoe laces and eyelets prove to be pretty much superfluous. With just the three straps the snugness of the CX 225's can be adjusted and fine tuned to suit the needs of the user and the user's style of riding. The innersole is very comfortable and it cradles the foot very nicely. The overall design of the shoe is such that they can actually be worn quite loosely without any sacrifice in power delivery, or foot movement within the shoe. The soles are very rigid and extremely efficient in terms of pedaling power delivery.

Not unusual for a road shoe, the soles are extremely slippery fresh out of the box and because of this you must be extremely careful if you attempt to pedal a stroke or two without clipping in. (this is a favorite trick of mine since more often than not I wear MTB shoes. This is so I can walk when I get hit by cars or develop unfixable flats from Nassau County's unlimited supply of road debris). Of course this is pretty much a bad idea with most road shoes anyway, since all their soles are rigid and slippery. But if you are really really careful you can get away with it. The toe and heel areas are built up a bit with ridges to help you not walk like a total duck, but ... these are road bike shoes. I am certain that if somebody developed a road bike shoe you actually could walk in, nobody would use it anyway. I mean, the whole point is to draw attention to your well spandexed, neo-faux Lance Armstrong, hottie, road biker self as you parade around in your duck walk clicky shoes, isn't it? But now I digress, yet again...

Bottom line: These are really cool shoes, and I mean that in terms of airflow and foot temperature, they helped me deliver a better, more efficient pedal stroke, they were comfortable to wear, easy to put on and take off, and light enough too. Hey, they are really nice road bike shoes. I will wear them a lot once I get them adequately grungy!

For more details, check out:
::www.lakecycling.com::