Essential winter clothing?

I can easily get cold feet wearing my Giro MTB shoes when using Time Speciale pedals, which are pretty big lumps of metal. In the cold weather it feels like a lot of the coldness moves from the pedals to the sole of my foot. Has anyone tried adding a thin extra insole, made out of cork or something like that, and did it help keep their feet warm?

Used to line ours with tin foil underneath the insoles for winter velodrome riding - worked ok but there might be a more refined solution..

Lots of anecdata about just using heavy duty tinfoil and you can buy foil/Mylar backed insoles

I found some foil backed insulating foam floating around the garage and made insoles from that. Works a treat.

Thanks for the tips. I would have assumed foil wrapped around your foot would be good for retaining heat via convection/radiation, but would have guessed that on just your sole it would make conduction of heat from your foot to the shoe/pedal easier. I'll give it a try tomorrow!

Fully endorse tin foil under the insole. Use it every winter. I think in general keeping and retaining heat in shoe as close to foot as possible works for me, so as well as overshoes I use sandwich bags over my socks but inside shoe . I also silicone vents and the gaps around the shoe plate/spd fitting as this seems an open thermal bridge to the outside world. Easily picked out in spring . Also, are you using thicker socks? Great as they are warm but I have had some shoes where it was actually colder as they were tighter fitting as a result so not do good for circulation. Good luck!

Just realise I have some offcuts of sonic gold hardwood floor underlay I can use below the custom footbeds that are quite thin, should do the trick.
Agree about having wiggle room with thicker socks, I find a Belgian bootie under a conventional overshoe works well when it’s freezing cold too.

Did someone say Belgian Booty?

1 Attachment

Galibier to a thermal cargo short bib, they’re v good