Went to the Perl Izumi outlet in Park City, UT yesterday and they had some of last year’s shoes on sale. I had tried some Specialized shoes on at Bingham Cycles the other day and really like them. My mountain bike shoes are specialized and I’ve had them for several years. They’re comfortable and have worked well for me.

While at the outlet store, I tried on several pair of shoes including a few carbon fiber soled shoes. The carbon ones actually felt pretty narrow. I tried on a pair of the road version of the silver Perl Izumi Flow shoe and found that it was as comfortable as the Specialized that I had tried on earlier in the week.

So, considering that I had traveled 50 miles and I saw no real difference between these and the specialized, they were on sale and the fact that it occurred to me that my bike will be a specialized, and I don’t want to have everything I wear to be specialized as well, I decided that these were the shoes I would get.

I did have to overcome the pride issue that I had in that I really wanted the carbon shoes for the cool-factor but I decided to go with practicality instead (although I am very happy with the way these look too – see the pick below! They are sweet.

Perl Izumi Flow Road shoes

A nice thing about these shoes is the closure system that “allows for instant micro-adjustment without pressure points for increased support and comfort”. It really is nice. Specialized is also doing this on some of their shoes as well.