Why Adventure Cyclists Should Wear Walkable Cycling Shoes

January 28, 2025

NOTE: This is Tip #2 in Comova’s “25 for 25 Adventure Cycling Tips” series. To receive future tips in your inbox, subscribe to The Adventure Almanac. The full collection of tips to date can be found here.

Look closely at the situations depicted in the images above. What do they have in common? Cyclists NOT on their bikes.

Suppose you find yourself having to ford a deep creek. Or the road you’re on is washed out by a boulder-strewn stream. Or your route turns out to include a dirt trail so steep you have to push your bike. Which of the shoes depicted below would you want to be wearing?

Adventure Cycling Tip #2

Wear Walkable Cycling Shoes

Sure, these are fairly extreme situations that might be beyond your comfort zone. But even short of deep adventure scenarios like these, all cyclists eventually find themselves out of luck. Which is to say, you have a bike that is unrideable and there is no fix given where you are or what you have with you.

“But wait,” you’re thinking, “isn’t ‘There’s Always a Solution‘ the third agreement of the Adventure Mindset? (see Tip #1 for the Adventure Mindset’s 3 agreements)

Well, yes, and sometimes the solution is to walk.

Walking as a Worst Case Scenario

Any good adventure cyclist needs to think about worst case scenarios. A worst case scenario I always plan for is being stuck in a remote place with no cell service and no one to turn to for help. I want to know in advance how far I might need to walk to get help or otherwise bail myself out.

I even factor in a 3 mph walking pace so I can anticipate how much food and water I should have on me in case a planned 3-hour ride becomes a 6-hour walk. And since any route that gets me into this situation will have likely involved some rough terrain, I want comfortable shoes with tread so I can walk on or off trail, as needed, depending on the most direct. route to safety.

Walking as a Normal Part of Adventure Cycling

Ideally, everything always goes smoothly and you never have to walk to get yourself out of a sticky situation. But even if you are lucky enough to avoid this fate, the reality is that the more adventurous a ride is the more time you’ll be spending off the bike.

Part of the enjoyment of an adventure, in fact, comes from laying your bike down to watch a hawk catching thermals, to listen to the sound of stones tumbling in a swollen stream, or to hike up a spur trail to explore a cave. Adventure Mindset agreement #1–”It’s not a race”–means we can allow ourselves to pause to appreciate these moments.

More practically speaking, adventures usually demand much more attention to navigation than your typical road ride. This might mean frequent stops to confirm you’re on route, pausing at forks to determine the correct way to go, or walking ahead to see if a washout or other road hazard is passable.

And then there are the unexpected encounters that make a ride an adventure: A closed gate that you have to squeeze around or climb over; a single track connector that turns out to be too rocky to ride; deep sand that forces you off your bike; or a trail that disappears forcing you to bushwhack until you find it again.

In each and every one of these instances, cycling shoes that are walkable will make your adventure more enjoyable.

The Case Against Road Cycling Shoes

Adventure cycling, for all the reasons listed above, makes wearing a walkable cycling shoe sensible. It’s an open-and-shut case, really, since road cycling shoes are quite simply unwalkable. They are lightweight, stiff and utilize a large cleat to maximize transfer of power. In other words, they are designed for speed, not walkability.

A road shoe’s stiff sole requires the wearer to balance on the plastic cleat (or walk in an awkward toe-up manner with only the heel and cleat contacting the ground).

Note the shape of the road cleats in the image below. The protruding cleats make it downright treacherous when trying to stand on a boulder at the side of a creek. Not to mention that the tip of the plastic cleat is prone to snapping off when walking in rough terrain.

The worst that can happen with a metal 2-bolt cleat–the type typically used by mountain bikers, cyclocross racers and anyone riding on rough terrain–is that you lose a bolt (which is why I also always carry a spare cleat bolt with me). Plus the cleat is recessed and the sole flexes so you can actually walk in them.

Whether Shimano, Time, Crankbrothers or any other manufacturer of pedals that receive a 2-bolt cleat, they also have in common another major advantage over road shoes: the ability to clip in even when the cleat gets packed with dirt, mud, snow or other debris. With road pedals, on the other hand, I’ve seen cyclists brought to a stop because a tiny pebble stuck under the tab at the front of the cleat prevents them from getting clipped in.

So there’s simply no question. If you want to use a clipless pedal system on your cycling adventures, it cannot be a road pedal if you also want to be able to walk around comfortably, safely, and for distances longer than the walk from the sidewalk into the cafe during a coffee stop.

But let’s say you’re open to riding flat pedals? Well, then a world of choices opens up. A trail shoe, like the one depicted above, makes a great choice. If you have a comfortable shoe for hiking, then you’re guaranteed to be comfortable when your tire’s sidewall is shredded and you’re forced to walk several miles to get help.

Some might argue that flat pedals are less efficient or that they (gasp!) slow you down. Let’s not forget the 2nd agreement of the adventure mindset: Slow down! But even if speed matters to you, it turns out that when Global Cycling Network put clipless pedals and flat pedals head-to-head in a somewhat scientific test, the clipless pedals were only measurably “faster” when sprinting. Except to outrun a vicious looking dog, when do we ever need to optimize for sprinting on an adventure ride?

Optimizing for Cycling Adventure Success

Most of the time, a cycling adventure’s success is not measured by speed but rather by completion. A successful adventure means you completed the route by overcoming the unexpected encounters that made the ride an adventure in the first place. And the ability to walk comfortably is never a hindrance when encountering the unexpected. Rather than optimizing for power or speed, an adventure cyclist optimizes for route completion.

So why wear shoes that are awkward, uncomfortable and unsafe to walk in?

There’s one more bonus to the “wear walkable cycling shoes” tip. It turns out it can help you with tip #1: “find the others.” Finding other adventure-minded cyclists should be easy because they will most likely be wearing walkable shoes.

I’m sure many readers already wear walkable MTB or gravel shoes. But if you’re new to all of this and have questions about shoes, pedal systems or anything else, don’t hesitate to reach out. I love sharing my knowledge so others can head out on their own adventures.

But I also love guiding cycling adventures, that’s why I started Comova after all. If you want to fast-track your growth as an adventure cyclist, learning with a guide in the field is a great way to acquire and hone your skills. But let’s start the conversation so I can figure out the best way to support you no matter what stage of adventure cycling you may be at.