Online shoe sizing

03/11/25 18:54 Filed in: Gear

There are many brands of shoes - I am specifically talking cycling shoes in this entry, but it could just as easily apply to running shoes or dress shoes too (there are many, many brands out there). A few of those brands have local dealers, who have some of their offerings. But there are way more choices than there are places to try the shoes on for fit.
I recently used the Trek 30-day trial for a pair of Trek shoes. My local Trek shop didn't have them in stock. They got me the pair I wanted to try. They were too big. Trek does make 1/2 size shoes, but Australia only gets whole sizes. A full size smaller would have been too small. I got my refund (shoes had barely been out of the box so I hope they get sold to someone else as new) and continued looking.
A few brands know they are poorly represented in physical stores, so they have online sizing guides to walk you through the process of selecting the correct size. Northwave, my usual cycling shoe brand, is one of them. I followed their steps and the suggested size puts me right on the line between the one I wear and the same size in "wide". Which is right on my experience with wearing them - about OK for width, could be a tad wider.
Armed with the knowledge that my self-assessment of shoe sizes is OK, I went to the Lake website and ran through their 4-step process for selecting the correct size and model (that latter bit is a realisation that they use different lasts at different levels and the optimal fit might be a specific shoe and size, not just a size). It gave me a size in wide in a specific shoe that is currently not in stock. Since my kangaroo crash in May, I've been looking for new shoes as the ones I had on that night got beaten up by being dragged along the ground.

Meanwhile I did the same fitting process with my partner's feet. She has been in some shoes for the past years but lately they've been hurting her feet. Feet change and what was once good is now less good. Lake has a model that seemed appropriate for her feet. I sized. She ordered. They fit well. Given the price and the fact that returns are OK until you place cleats on the shoe, I wanted to make sure she was happy before I put the cleats on. Turns out they were a good choice.
Thanks Lake. Your system works.

Sub-story. Why no more Northwave? With a few diversions into other brands, I have been wearing Northwave shoes most of the time since 1997. That's a long time in one brand. They had basically flat soles. A couple of years ago they wanted to make their shoes both stiffer and lighter. To get a stiff flat carbon sole requires a certain thickness. But if you make the sole shaped like a boat hull, you can use less thickness of carbon and still get stiffness from the shape. Except that bit I mentioned above about being on the cusp of the wide shoe - in the boat shaped sole I never got comfortable. They only produce a select few shoes - in one colour that I can see - in the wide model. Whereas Lake seems to make all their shoes in narrow, standard and wide widths. The Lake shoes are $50 more than the Trek shoes were, but $50 less than the Northwave shoes would be.

Hopefully they get some in stock soon.

Michael Hanslip Coaching

If you want to go faster, you have to pedal harder

Online shoe sizing