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Initial impressions of the 2005 Adidas Adistar XC Race shoes

Before I start, I think it’s important to let you know that I am the Imelda Marcos of bike shoes. I don’t know what it is, but I just seem to buy new shoes at the drop of a hat and then send them back or resell them when I find something small that bothers me. For a time, I was buying and selling shoes on eBay at a mind-boggling rate of one pair per month, so I feel I’m pretty qualified to talk about fit, features, and flaws.

This writeup takes an early, pre-abuse look at the 2005 Adidas Adistar XC Race mountain bike shoe. I hope that my dissection of the shoe makes it easier for you to get a decent idea about the way it fits, its construction, and a host of other things.

Some background

When I was engaged in my shoe-buying frenzy, I was battling hot foot, and ended up realizing that custom orthotics might be in order rather than placing all the blame on the shoes.

My typical shoe size is 8 but my right foot is about 1/2 size larger. This is actually really common, and I sometimes wish that all manufacturers would make their shoes available in singles. Regardless, custom orthotics can help you overcome any foot ‘issues’, especially for someone who is as flat footed (overpronater) as I am. When I inserted my set of orthotics, my shoes became too small and caused my right big toe to smack into the front of the shoe, promoting an ingrown toenail. After the first infection healed up, I decided to upsize shoes and all was good until my problems started again.

I’m a sucker for a good deal and I’m a sucker for good marketing. 2005 Adidas shoes are on closeout all over, and the Adistar XC Race is the company’s flagship mountain bike shoe. And I figured that since they are racing specific, I knew that if I picked up a pair, I’d go faster. Interestingly enough, Adidas’s second tier model, the Marathon has a lighter claimed weight, but it didn’t have ‘XC Race’ in the name so you know that I couldn’t buy those shoes.

Initial impressions

Aesthetics. The Adistar shoes are all black with some white accents and are understated compared to many of the shoes available today. They’re really sharp looking, in my humble opinion, and the buckle just screams ‘cool’.

The sock liner. The sock liner that came with this shoe, as with pretty much every shoe I’ve worn in the past, is pure crap. It’s only function in life is as a sock liner, not as a foot bed. The first thing you should do is put it in a bag and save it in case you ever want to sell your shoes. After you’ve done this, buy some good footbeds like Superfeet or Sole. If you have the cash go for some custom orthotics and you’ll be really happy.

Shoe manufacturers should do themselves a favor and include a top level foot bed rather than provide their typical liners. Anyways, I didn’t even try the shoes on with the stock sock liners; they were put away immediately and my funky orthotics were placed inside the shoes.

Fit. The leather on these things is ooh-so-soft in most places and pretty tough where it counts (like in the toe box and on the heel). If you’ve ever worn high-end soccer cleats you know what I mean — the material just conforms to your feet — and is significantly nicer than my last pair of shoes (a pair of Nikes).

The toe box on this shoe is known for being narrow, but I didn’t find it as constricting as on my previous shoes since the leather was so supple. Another reason for the comfortable fit around the toes is the interesting system the use for the two lower velcro straps: the straps are connected to the shoe with some nylon cord.

By going with a pair of shoes that was a half size higher than my previous pair, the Adistars have enough room for my right foot’s ‘difficult’ big toe, although the larger size makes my other foot feel like it’s swimming in the shoe a little. I might experiment by putting one of the many left over thin sockliners in there to help fill some volume.

James from Cycling News “>found the nylon cords were too long on his pair and allowed the strap to hang too low, and mine had the same problem. I used some small zip ties to take up some of the slack instead of following James’ method of tying a knot in the cord and it worked fine, with the straps staying perfectly in place.

The top strap uses a cool ‘click-click’ ratcheting system and is connected to a fairly wide and thick rubber instep pad. Typically, I shy away from the ratchet systems, since I’ve had a rock garden swallow other shoes that had a similar buckle-style fit system. In that instance, I was trapped until I was able to squirm free. Since then, I stuck with the non-buckle, three-strap systems setup but the Adistars weren’t available with this feature.

The ratchet seems to work fine and tightened up the strap a single click at a time. You press on the outside of the buckle to release the strap. The review of these shoes by Cycling News pointed this out and the potential for accidental release. I could totally see it happening. For 2006 it looks like they changed the buckle design slightly and Adidas seems to have shielded the release button somewhat, though I can’t be sure since I don’t have a pair in my possession.

The EVA pad does an incredible job of securing the foot into the heel cup. The heel cup is nicely molded, though my orthotics tend to place my heel higher than intended in the cup. I can definitely feel the additional pressure on the tendons on top of my foot. Walking with the straps as tight as they’d be when riding is uncomfortable, so I keep them loose until I’m on the bike and riding.

The soles

I have very strong opinions on cycling soles:

1. The area around the cleat needs to be very wide. It needs to be big enough to accommodate the cleat as well as provide room around the cleat for mud clearing. I’ve had to cut away the soles around the cleat area several times to provide enough gap to keep mud from packing in immediately.
2. The tread around the cleat can’t be so thick as to interfere with cleat engagement.
3. The tread on the rest of the shoe does NOT need to be for climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. It seems to be some marketing fad to place the biggest baddest tread on mountain bike shoes.
4. There must be tread underneath the bottom portion of the foot.

The Adistars do very well on the first three items, and get half marks on the fourth. There is tread on the edges of the sole, but there is a good deal of exposed carbon running down the center. When riding in technical areas, there are plenty of situations where I can’t get clipped in fast enough, or choose to stay unclipped. Many times the underside of the foot will sit on the pedal.

Even though the shoes did have some tread in this critical area, I decided to supplement it. I cut a pattern out and used it on an old tire (my precious Seracs). I glued the cut out piece into the sole using heavy duty 3m spray. I’ve also heard of people using pop-rivets to secure tread onto the sole.

The shoes came with screw in cleats, although Adidas didn’t send any screw covers for when the cleats aren’t used. I think that these spots should be filled in with something to keep the threads from filling up with dirt.

Initial impressions on function

While riding, the shoes are very stiff in the sole although everywhere else, they feel like slippers. The heel cup holds the foot very well when the top strap is tight enough and, affter a few minutes of pedaling, the pressure under the top strap seems to dissipate some. However when pedaling with my heels down I can feel it again.

The overall fit with these shoes is really good. My big toe is not slamming into the front of the shoe, and even though they are slightly on the big size for my left foot doesn’t seem to be causing any annoying slippage.

There was no problem clipping in to my SPD pedals. The most problems I’ve had with pedals and tread interference has been with Egg Beater Candy pedals — those would be the best test of tread interference.

Walking in these shoes is tougher than in shoes with more flexible soles. These babies have full carbon down the length of the sole and, while the tread is soft enough for walking on rocks and dirt, the stiff soles do not make it feel like I’m out for a stroll. The instep pad places a lot of pressure on the top of the foot when walking too. Of course, since the Adistars are intended to serve as pure XC race shoes, you really shouldn’t be spending too much time walking around in them.

Under the microscope. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be looking closely at a few things:

• How comfortable is the shoe across the top of my foot. Does the pad cause place too much pressure on the tendons of the foot? Will it break in more over time in this area?
• How robust the ratchet design is and if it will be susceptible to accidental release?
• How difficult hike-a-bike sections are based on the stiff soles and the EVA pad placing pressure on the top of the foot?
• How well the dangly straps survive over time?
• Will my tire tread graft work? And for how long?
• How much time is saved on a hill climb because I am wearing shoes that are named XC Race?
• Will anyone notice my cool shoes?

Check back soon for a full update.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 17th, 2006 at 12:02 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.