Winter Boot and Burning Rubber

For all of you out there that ride flats in the winter, you know it is especially hard to find a good boot that has all the different features you want.  One of those key features is a sole that works well with a pedal.  The large tread in a winter boot causes the pins on your pedal to float between the tread bloks.  This causes your boot to slip around and forces you to hunt for a foot position, while riding, that interfaces with the pedal pins better.  This is annoying.

I wear a pair of Columbia Agent-X boots for most winter riding.  They have a slim profile, really wide spacious toe box, they're waterproof, relatively warm, and they are pretty easy on the wallet.  Not a bad choice in my book.

However, like most other boots, the tread lug is too aggressive and deep to work well with platform pedals.  So, about a month ago I decided to try and fix this.  I figured that if I could just cut off the tread lugs on the boot, the pins in the pedal would dig in to the flat rubber sole.

 

Fortunately for me, I have a tire groover that I picked up for modding tires a while back.  It gets wicked hot and the u-shaped blade slides right through rubber.  It was the perfect tool for my experiment.

After breathing burnt rubber for a while, I chopped off pretty much all the lugs on the front portion of my boots.  I left the lugs on the rear because they don't touch my pedals and I figured the extra grip might come in handy while walking around.

The result has been great so far.  The boot definitely hooks up with my pedals far better now and I can feel the pedal a little better through the sole.  I was nervous about the loss of traction for walking, but I haven't really noticed it.  Plus, I figure that I want these boots to work best when I am on the pedals, not walking around, so I am willing to compromise.

I don't know if this modification would work for everyone, but I am going to continuing doing this with future riding boots until I find a decent sole out of the box.  If you can get your hands on a rubber cutting tool of some sort, you should give it a try as well.  Good luck.

Also, my buddy Jed is rad.