Would you drive a WRC rally car to take your kids to school or use an Olympic track bike to pick up some shopping? It would probably work, but would it be any fun? What about if you want (need?) a pair of the world’s newest and shiniest disco slippers? Would they work as a daily runaround instead of being used by World Cup gravel racers? We were fortunate enough to get our hands (feet?) on a pair of Shimano's latest RX910 S-Phyre gravel race shoes and put them through their paces to see how they work as a daily runaround.
These are the best looking gravel cycling shoes the world has ever seen. That’s *quite* a strong statement, but it’s absolutely true. Just putting them on and ratcheting up the tension courtesy of the BOA dials will make you 10% faster. They will also instantly make you more attractive to future soul (sole?) mates and when you wear them you will gain the fitness of Marianne Vos, the technical prowess of Danny MacAskill and the panache of Julian Alaphilippe. OK, so none of these things are verifiably true, but the RX910s are undeniably great looking, particularly in this fetching blue colour option which seems to absolutely leap out of photographs (as well as in real life). They are also designed as gravel race shoes and are fitted with the stiffest sole that Shimano makes. Shoes designed to be worn by professional cyclists are not necessarily going to be ideal for wearing on your typical Sunday morning gravel club ride. It does make for an interesting story though – do they work as a ‘daily driver’?
Feet vary in shape to a quite incredible degree and this means that just because a pair of shoes fit like a glove on one person does not make them the dream ‘kicks’ for someone else. When the fit is right you can often tell instantly – how much tension the BOA dials allow you to apply, how the heel cup cradles the back of your foot, whether there is sufficient space in the toe box to allow to wriggle room in different temperature regimes, what the arch support is like, how the ‘tongue’ on the shoe’s upper sits on the top of your foot. All these tiny details add up and when you’re paying a fairly eye watering US$480.00, €419.95 EUR or £369.99 for a pair, you are going to feel very hard done by if the fit is not 110% perfect.
Fortunately, the instant I slipped my relatively skinny, not-all-that-big feet into them I had a Cinderella moment. They instantly felt perfect. Not just OK, but so good it was like the last used to create the shoes had been moulded on my exact feet. My toes felt cossetted. The tension that the micro-adjust BOA Li2 dials allowed me to apply was well distributed. My heel snugged precisely into the “Anti-Twist Stabiliser Heel Cup.” There was no unnecessary material, undue movement or wobbly uncertainty – just a perfectly tailored fit. You could argue that this is exactly what you should expect from a pair of top-of-the-range shoes, but that isn’t always the case – a high price tag doesn’t always equate to good fit or decent comfort.
The biomechanics of the shoe’s fit were tangible. What is more ethereal is how they made me feel. A significant amount of academic research has been undertaken looking into whether the cost of a product effects how you feel about it, with separate research looking into the link between whether you perform better if you feel happier about the way you look. In all the research there was an incredibly strong link for both. My study was significantly less scientific, but as soon as I put on the RX910 shoes I felt faster. That probably sounds like absolute rubbish, but the fact the shoes made me look more like a pro cyclist actually made me feel more like one too. While Shimano make no claims about performance enhancement when you wear the RX910s, scientific research backs up the fact that you are likely to perform better. The Sunday gravel club ride had better watch out….
When I read about all the clever engineering that had gone into the RX910s I wondered how relevant it would be for day-to-day use. Would an über-stiff sole mean walking around a mid-ride café was a Health&Safety nightmare? Would the large drain holes at the front and rear of the sole mean they were summer-only shoes? Would I actually be able to feel the difference that the ‘pontoon cleat system’ made on a typical gravel ride?
Despite the soles being given a carbon stiffness rating of 12 (presumably from a scale of 1 to 10?), the shoes were significantly more comfortable both on and off the bike than I had expected. If you lift out the removable insole, the carbon footbed of the shoe is instantly visible – there is no additional padding or cushioning, just a lump of sculpted carbon fibre staring back at you. This explains the feathery 304g (size 43) weight, but doesn’t explain the comfort. The RX910 were super comfy both while riding and while walking/during stops/pre&post ride. There were no hot spots or unusual aches/pains and certainly no need to remove them at a mid-ride café stop like you see riders wearing pro-level road shoes do on occasions. Grip levels were decent too. In the back of my mind I kept thinking about the cost of the shoes and there is no way I would ever use them on a ride which was going to have significant amount of hike-a-bike – they’re just too expensive and too beautiful to subject them to that, but for your normal off-the-bike activities, grip levels are decent and you don’t end up waddling around like a duck as you might in a pair of road shoes.
If I’m honest, the drain holes were probably the one feature of the shoe that I’m not sold on. These are not 5-season shoes – the highly perforated upper would mean you would get cold feet very rapidly in cold/wet conditions. For this reason I’m unlikely to use them outside of the warmer, drier months of the year so I can’t see me ever needing the water draining capabilities. I’m sure that if you were racing and you encountered a river crossing/unavoidable puddle then you would be glad of this feature, but I’m going to try and keep mine dry! Fortunately the drain holes are easy to cover up inside the with some waterproof tape.
The pontoon cleat system is a very clever idea. Fitting the cleat was a breeze and you have significantly more potential for dialling in your perfect fit thanks to the extra side to side/front to back adjustment that the pontoon allows. The fact that the pontoon is replaceable in the future is a bonus too as it increases the life span of the shoes. It’s hard to scientifically assess whether the pontoon dramatically enhanced the connection between the shoes and my SPD pedal, but my gut feel is that it did. The extra rubber around the cleat, combined with the lateral stiffness of the carbon fibre sole meant it felt like there was less unwanted flexing and this should help reduce the potential for hotspots and discomfort on longer rides or in hotter conditions.
If you’ve read this far, it should be pretty obvious that I absolutely love the RX910s. They fit me like a glove, they’re super comfy both when riding and when off the bike, they make me feel like a better rider than I really am and they look incredible. The elephant in the room is of course the cost – you could buy a second hand gravel bike for the same price as a pair of these shoes and that’s pretty hard to overlook. But, if you win the lottery, you have aspirations of becoming a top level gravel racer or you just decide that you deserve a treat, I think you will be very happy with your purchasing decision.
The RX910 disco slippers are available in Deep Sea, Blue, White and Black from Shimano stockists and cost US$480.00, €419.95 EUR or £369.99. You can find more details here.