Using Roadie Shoes Off Road

So, I’ve a pair of Giro road shoes that have sat unloved in the cupboard after I gave away my road bike. The other night while browsing for pedals  I stumbled across the Shimano adaptors to convert 3 hole cleated shoes to 2 holes…Interesting…Apart from the obvious downside of having zero grip on the sole, is there any other reason I can’t use these on light XC duties?

I think Absalon used to race xc in road shoes and pedals for a while. If you are as good as him you should cope.

I use a very stiff s-works carbon gravel/xc 2 bolt spd shoe for MTB and road, and it’s great (except for occassional greasy underfoot in the winter).

For gravel/XC I guess they’ll mostly be fine. Lack of grip and cleat longevity would be my issues.

The big hitters like Keegan Swenson IIRC use road shoes for Leadville 100 – they’d be fine for anything where you don’t have to walk or dab.

Road cleats get clogged with mud incredibly quickly and you have to take a stick to them to clean them out before you can clip in again. So I wouldn’t take them out on muddy tracks or anything where you have to put regular feet in dirt tbh.

I used to use a pair of carbon sole road shoes (with SPD-R pedals, it was a long time ago) on my Cannondale hardtail for razzing around the local woods.  I knew I wouldn’t have to put my feet down at any point and they were comfortable shoes.  Not sure I gained anything from doing it though.  I wouldn’t ride like that these days.

So long as you don’t need to get off and push !

I do have an old pair of road shoes with both 3 and 2 bolt fixings. Never tried spds with them though. Might be ok, better if you can bolt some sort of grip/studs on the now redundant SPD SL mountings I’d have thought.

@elray89, yep experienced that, but these are designed to take off the road cleat, stick on the adapter and use a regular MTB style 2 bolt cleat. @fossy, aye, there’s the rub, it does rather limit what they can be used for I guess, but I’ve some longish gravel/canal-side ex railway routes around me where they’d be a useful weatherproof(ish) option. I reckon I’ll give it go.

Those adaptors put the cleat a long way from the bottom of the shoe and leave the cleat unprotected when most MTB shoes have some tread around the cleat. It means that they’ll be very cumbersome to walk on.

I think you’d be better just using road cleats rather than the adaptors and accepting that mud may be an issue.

A mate of mine uses an old pair of road shoes with an SPD cleat on his gravel bike; his shoes have 2 & 3-bolt pattern.

The SPD cleat sticks out a long way from the completely flat, slippery sole. They make a horrible crunching racket on stone/hard ground and look horrible to walk in. MTB shoes have the rubbery sole built up around the cleat, so this isn’t an issue. And when using SPD-SL cleats you have a bit more of a flat platform to walk around on.

Saying all that – I have just had a look and they do an adaptor, SM-SH41 which has little rubber bumpers either side of the cleat placement. Is that the one you are referring to?

That would actually make it a lot better than i have described above, as you won’t be walking directly on the cleat.

https://ride.shimano.com/blogs/technologies/how-to-use-sm-sh41-cleat-adapters

Lack of grip and cleat longevity would be my issues.

I wore my Shimano Road shoes/spd-sl pedals for a while whilst ‘gravelling’, as my Diverge was effectively road bike for commuting and gravel bike for the ‘gnarr’ (there isn’t any whatsoever) of North Tyneside 😉 However, even given the absolute lack of gnarr, they were a bloody liability if I had to unclip hurriedly – usually sliding in mud, or push the bike anywhere especially in mud etc. Also killed the road cleats a lot quicker.

So, this is the adapter I was thinking about. It seems to have rubber supports surrounding the cleat – similar to an MTB’s shoes cleat channel?

Edit: Apologies as per @Stumpy01 post

I’ve done it by gluing some old tyre tread to the bottom of the shoe.

Panaracer Fire XC as I recall.

I’ve just come back from Majorca where I was road biking, something I don’t really do in the UK. Because i use Crank bros on gravel and MTB in the Uk I bought a pair of Giro road shoes which had both the 3 and 2 bolt fitting and took a pair of Candys to fit to the rental bike. In a week of riding i’ve trashed both the cleats and the soles as the cleats stick out so much and nearly killed myself several times on stone steps. Would not recommend – next time I’ll use road cleats.

Wouldn’t recommend it even with an adapter for all the reasons outlined – protruding cleats, mainly, even if two bolt, are not great to dab on rougher terrain. I had a pair of Shimano Touring shoes that were basically road shoes with a recessed two-bolt mount – great –  but I just use Giro XC shoes everywhere I run cleats and it’s fine…