off-road.cc

The Ride Concepts women’s Livewire shoes are a reasonable prices flat mountain bike shoe that is robust, pretty stiff and has a cool, casual look for trail and enduro riding. They aren’t as tacky as rivals but they are pretty sticky and are ‘wear all day’ comfortable.

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The new range of shoes from Ride Concepts include both clips and flats, it's one of the latter we have here in a women’s model designed for pretty much any sort of riding. The shoes have some interesting features including D3O material on the insoles, a slightly asymmetrical ankle collar for protection, a gusseted tongue to stop dirt getting in and an elastic loop to keep laces safe and tidy.

Ride Concepts say they use their 6.0 High Grip rubber outsole and keep that D30 on the bottom of the insole at the ball of the foot and the heel to deal with impacts. I couldn’t feel the difference and I did feel like I had to keep the shoe laces looser to deal with the thicker insole which means a bit of fiddling to get the correct tension over the foot.

All the women’s shoes get the 6.0 High Grip rubber rating on the sole, you’d have to buy the men’s Powerline shoes to get the 4.0 Max Grip sole. The rubber on our shoes is fairly grippy though, it’s not Five Ten Stealth S1 grippy but it does the job well and you won’t find these shoes slipping about on the pedals unnecessarily either. The rubber seems to be lasting fairly well, I’ve used these for a month on various pedals and I’m yet to see any nicks or holes in the sole.

The shoes are fairly stiff in the mid sole area with a flexible section at the ball of the foot. I felt they gave good support on the pedals, whilst being comfy to wear all day and walk around in too. I don’t expect a flat shoe to be super stiff and the Ride Concepts Livewire’s hit the mark well.

There is a custom moulded toe and heel guard with durable outer which is not the most breathable for that you might have to look at the more expensive Hellions which have perforated ventilation holes.

A word on the sizing, these come up small, I’m usually a size UK five but needed a UK size 6 which were still not the roomiest shoes. I weighed my set of shoes in at 692g which I don’t think is bad at all for a sub £100 pair of flat shoes that are robust, are pretty grippy and that look great.

• www.silverfish-uk.com

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