Adidas is at it again with the Gravel Cycling Shoe
Adidas is at it again with the Gravel Cycling Shoe
Hot on the heels of the Velosamba casual SPD and the retro-chic, accurately-titled Road Cycling Shoe, Adidas has released a third cycling shoe. It is called The Gravel Cycling Shoe, and it is – hold onto your hats, folks – a Gravel Cycling Shoe.
Like pretty much every other shoe of the category, Adidas’s offering features a two-bolt SPD pattern on the sole. The upper is made of Primegreen recycled materials, and Adidas promises “no virgin polyester” has been used in the construction of them.
Technical details are pretty light-on – Adidas doesn’t promise that the sole stiffness goes up to 11 (let alone 13) and doesn’t even really get into what the sole is made out of, other than being ‘synthetic’ with TPU ‘walking pods’.
That grip looks pretty generous, extending along most of the outsole in a pattern of raised nubbins. That will help with walkability, although it seems like there’s a fair bit of potential for them to get clogged up in sloppy conditions, and who knows about durability. There’s a simple laced closure running through four loops, with a metal eyelet up top.
An ankle cuff gives the shoe a kind of boot-like silhouette, which Adidas says will help keep gravel and dust out of the shoe. Giro offers something similar on its Empire VR70 knit shoe. And while this feature isn’t something I’ve personally ever felt like I was missing on a pair of cycling shoes, you do you.
There are two colours available at launch – a black-on-black-on-black ‘Core Black’ colour scheme, which is fine, and a much more interesting (but difficult to match with) ‘Pulse Aqua’, which stirs some deep-buried hypebeast yearnings.
The Gravel Cycling Shoe is available in a wide range of sizes, running from European sizes 36–48 ⅔.
You can track them down in select markets via Adidas.com and company stores, and they retail for US$170/€180. I am outraged to report that Australia is not one of those select markets.
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