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D2 Custom Shoes
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Product: D2 road and MTB shoes. Configuration: Custom. Test Platform: Fuji Team (road) and Kona Dawg Primo (MTB). Product Put in Service: Spring and summer 2009. Reviewed by: Rich Ries. Cost: Prices start at $575 and vary with the amount of customization required. Weight/Mass: Road 2 lbs. 0.24 oz/914 g; MTB 2 lb 1.93 oz./962 g. Values are for pairs without cleats. Recommended? Highly.
Executive Summary: Perfect shoes for imperfect feet.
Update: As noted in the Performance section, the mountain bike shoes got uncomfortable on long rides. With time the discomfort set in earlier, so I called Don Lamson, explained the problem, and he said to ship the shoes to him for adjustment, which I did on October 14. I asked him to loosen up the sticky cleat mounting plates while he had the shoes. The shoes came back on November 4 and I rode with them on November 5. It was a fairly short ride - just under 14 miles - because it was my first ride after more than two weeks off the bike while I dealt with H1N1 (swine) flu. In the past, 14 miles would have been enough to start feeling pain and there was none on this ride. Whether the fix will be effective for longer rides remains to be seen. I'll post another update after I've had a chance to do something over 20 miles. And there was no change to the sticky cleat plate. They're still stuck in place.
Update #2: I've done a few 20+ mile rides since the shoes came back and the problem appears to be solved. One extra step in achieving the perfect fit and well worth the effort on a pair of shoes I expect will last me for many years.
Ratings
(1 is lowest, 5 is highest)
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Comments
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Effectiveness
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5
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Comfortable and efficient
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Ease of Ordering
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3
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And the results justify the effort
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Cost/Value
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5
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The cost per use is absurdly low given the long product life cycle
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Style
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5
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Easy to get unique color combinations
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I have mutant feet, and I'm not the only one. I wear an “H” width, which is what they put you in after you've blown through all the multiples of “E” widths. Other riders I know have problems with hammertoes, bunions, high arches, flat arches, feet of dissimilar size, or they suffer from heel spurs, plantar fasciitis, or plain ol' hot foot syndrome. I get my running shoes from an athletic footwear store in Louisville and my street shoes from a specialty online retailer in Massachusetts. My bike shoes? Don Lamson is my only source. Don and his business partner Dan Kurtanich are D2 Shoe, which is in Eagle, Colorado.
Don made my first pair of custom road shoes in the mid-'90s. Although I log lots of information about my rides, I don't keep track of which shoes I wear. I don't know how much use I got out of those original shoes, but I know it's in excess of 80,000 miles. I wore them for several touring rides, including my cross-country ride of more than 3,000 miles in 1998.
So those shoes were overdue for replacement, right? Not really. In 2008 I broke the original laces and had to replace them. The linings of the heel cups were wearing through but the Lorica outer was still in great shape. I was concerned about wear on the carbon outsoles so I had our local cobbler apply a sole-saver at some point (Vibram sport utility oil-resisting Gumlite sheet, style #8529). But the main reason I needed new shoes was that my feet had changed. Specifically the joint between my first metatarsal and the first proximal phalanx - the knuckle where my big toe joins my foot - was much lower than the corresponding knuckles of the other four metatarsals and on long rides this caused pain. This was true on both feet but was especially problematic on my right foot.
Using the D2 Web site's e-mail program I sent Don several e-mails in 2008, to which he never replied. I e-mailed him again a few more times in 2009. In one of those e-mails I inquired about exchanging BRAT sponsorship for shoes. That one got a reply: “No.” Plan B. If I couldn't get free shoes maybe I could at least get a discount for two pairs and a review. Several phone calls later Don, Dan, and I arrived at an agreement.
D2 has shoes for specific cycling applications. In the past they've even offered golf shoes and (as Lamson Shoes) hiking boots. I ordered a pair of Super Crits for my road shoes and a pair of MTN Ascents for my mountain biking shoes. The Ascents are basically Super Crits with lugged soles.
I considered ordering shoes from Rocket 7 but chose not to for two reasons. First, even though Rocket 7's Web site was up and running, it appeared the company in general had gone dormant. Second, their prices were much higher than D2's: $1,450 for the first pair and $950 for the second.
Ordering
D2 has a network of bike shops and shoe retailers that will assist in fitting and ordering your shoes, and that network is expanding. Check the list at the D2 Web site. If there's no affiliate near you, D2 provides a fit kit that you can use to document your custom requirements. The process is fairly involved and it works best if you have someone helping. The instructions that come with the kit are clear and the D2 Web site has video instruction that's very helpful.
After you complete the tracings and measurements and foot impressions (used to create the orthotic) you mail the kit back. D2 provides a FedEx Ground label. Once D2 has your kit you'll have a phone conversation with Don to go over the details and address any specific concerns either of you may have. Your order sheet also has places to specify which colors you want for parts of the shoes.
Once the design is finalized the order is sent to a plant in Mexico. This factory is a contractor to D2 but D2 is its only customer, so D2's control is quite high. Growing up in the 1960s I remember that guys who were customizing their '57 Chevies had their button-tuck interiors done in Mexico, so I had high expectations of the finished shoes. They didn't disappoint. The quality was as good as that of my original Lamson shoes.
The Mexican connection did pose one problem, however. The mountain bike soles were hung up in Customs for weeks. Eventually a worker from Mexico went to Colorado to retrieve a box of soles. While my road shoes arrived in just a few weeks, my mountain bike shoes took two months because of this snag.
First Impressions
The road shoes I got weren't the road shoes I ordered. Although I specified a 2-hole drilling on the sole so I could use all my Shimano SPD road pedals, the shoes arrived with 3-hole drilling, which is what virtually every other road pedal requires. I called Don. He apologized profusely and offered to redo the shoes. I said no, that he had forced my into using modern pedals and that the change was probably a good thing. The only reason I clung to SPDs is that they're available in campus pedals, which are clipless on one side and have platforms on the other. I like these for touring so I can ride clipped in all day but wear street shoes coming back from the showers or restaurants in the evening. I ordered some Time pedals and I love them. I'll resolve the touring issue the next time I do a touring ride. And given that pretty much every road rider has abandoned the original SPD pedal design, Don's default to the 3-hole drilling is understandable.
I liked my road shoes as soon as I got them, but I didn't have an early opportunity to do a longer ride in them. My old shoes felt fine for the first 40 or 50 miles. I needed a long ride to confirm that the new shoes solved my metatarsal problem. I also wanted to confirm the fit and performance before I ordered my mountain bike shoes. No sense having two expensive pairs of shoes with a not-quite-right fit.
I was also uneasy about the feel of the orthotic. It seemed very different from the footbed on my street shoes, and my street shoes fit well. I called Don and talked to him about this. “Do you have a custom orthotic in your street shoes?” he asked. I told him I didn't. “Well that's part of the difference. But even if you had an orthotic these would probably feel different.”
“Why is that?”
“Because your foot is much more active in any other shoe,” Don said. “The rigid carbon sole and general construction of a bike shoe limits how much your foot moves, and an orthotic for a more flexible shoe is made differently to accommodate the increased range of motion.”
That made sense.
About a month after I got the shoes I had a chance to do a couple of longer rides. The Oldenburg ride is about 62 miles and has some incredibly difficult climbs. (See our review here.) Five days later I did our Zenas loop with a couple of buddies. The iteration we did that day was just under a century (97.7 miles) and fairly flat. The road shoes performed well on both rides. As a final test before ordering MTB shoes I put my Time road pedals on my Kona and rode the trails at Versailles. The shoes felt fine and I ordered the second pair.
When the MTB shoes arrived and I put them on for the first time, they felt very different from the road shoes. How was that possible? They were made from the same tracings. I got out my Vernier calipers and checked the shoes and they measured exactly the same. Another call to Don and another sensible answer. He said the new shoes would conform to my foot, as had my road shoes, and he was right. Three rides later the shoes felt fine. And that's where they stopped. My old shoes never experienced excessive stretch, even when wet, and I expect these new shoes to hold their form indefinitely, as well.
But the mountain bike shoes were not problem-free. The threaded inserts to which the cleats attached had been jammed into a too-narrow channel and were unmovable. I could see where the carbon fiber had lifted and splintered where the threaded sleeve exited the sole. I called Dan and he said there was no way this was the case, but clearly it was. Fortunately the inserts were positioned where I needed them. If not I would have had to drive them out and open up the slots in the carbon soles a millimeter or so.
Performance
As of this writing I have a couple of hundred miles on both pairs of shoes. They are stiff and efficient, yet comfortable. The road shoes interface well with my Time pedals. The mountain bike shoes didn't like their Time Atac pedals; the cage hung up on the sole and release was difficult. Spacers under the cleats didn't fix the problem. But the problem was unique to the Time pedals as engagement and release were faultless with SPD and Crank Brothers Candy pedals.
While I've ridden thousands of miles on clipless road pedals and am completely comfortable with them, I'm still in the crashing part of the learning curve with clipless MTB. Before clipless pedals were widely available, I rode road with clips and straps so it's been 30 years since I rode platforms on a road bike. For three decades I've had to perform a specific movement to get free of my road pedals. But a simple side-slide was all I needed while mountain biking until recently. I'll have to condition myself to twist my foot to gain release. And it doesn't help that I'm used to road clipless because the technique doesn't transfer to mountain biking. Road release is typically done casually in the last 10 yards approaching a convenience store or stoplight. Mountain bike release tends to be part of a frantic, spontaneous struggle for control. Even in less urgent situations I'm unused to clipless pedals on a mountain bike. I never realized how much I finessed my bike using foot position until I was no longer able to do so. Eventually I'll develop a riding style compatible with clipless, but after decades of riding platforms “eventually” may take a while. In the meantime I do appreciate the main advantage offered by clipless pedals, the ability to engage more muscles through a wider range of crank revolution without tons of ankling or other weird concessions. When I pull up with my shoe, the pedal comes along.
The road shoes remained comfortable on long rides. The mountain bike shoes got uncomfortable around 40 miles and by 50 miles my feet were in true agony. I attribute this to the difference in pedaling dynamics between road and trail riding and the fact that I still need to refine my mountain bike pedaling style. I hope I'm right. I don't do frequent 50-plus mile mountain bike rides, but I do them often enough that I want my shoes to feel as good at the end of a long ride as they do at the end of a short one. We'll see.
I've hosed off the MTB shoes and found that they came clean easily and dried quickly. I never gave my old shoes any special care and I don't think I'll coddle these new shoes, either.
Are They Right For You?
Studies have shown that about three-quarters of Americans suffer from some sort of foot problem at some point in their lives. If you're among the 25 percent who don't have foot trouble and if your feet aren't abnormally wide or narrow or high or flat or whatever, you can probably get by with off-the-rack shoes. For the rest of us, custom shoes from D2 are the best solution.
And the cost? D2 custom shoes are not cheap, but the cost is all front-end loaded. Once you have the shoes they cost you nothing more. And if we use the reduction-to-the-ridiculous argument, we find that the shoes cost about $0.023 per mile or $2.30 for a century ($575/25,000 miles, assuming you keep the shoes for 5 years and ride 5,000 miles per year). My experience was even better and is probably closer to real-world, given the durability of these shoes. My cost per mile was just $0.0072 per mile ($575/80,000 miles), or about seventy-two cents for a century ride. What did you spend on sports drink and energy bars on your last century? Was it less than seventy-two cents? Less than two dollars and thirty cents? Aren't custom shoes worth at least that much?
They are to me.
This is a common point of failure for my shoes (above), where the first knuckle of my little toe presses against the side of the shoe. After 13 years and 80,000+ miles, there's no appreciable damage to my original Lamson Shoes.
The liner of the heel cup was worn through on both shoes but the Lorica outer was intact.
This is the sole saver I had applied to my original shoes.
D2's Super Crit shoes use three straps for closure. Note the replaceable wear plates on the toe and heel. No need for a sole saver.
Despite a request for 2-hole drilling, my road shoes came with 3-hole soles. In the end that worked to my advantage and resulted from the fact that I was the last holdout for 2-hole road drilling. The little white triangles serve as guides for cleat placement.
D2's MTN Ascent shoes are Super Crits with lugged Vibram soles.
The slots that allow adjustment of the threaded plates to which the cleats attach on the mountain bike shoes were a bit too narrow. The cleats were stuck in this position, which happened to be the right position for me. Had it not been I would have had to open up the slots a bit. Compounding the problem was the glued-in liner, which also held the plates in place.