I wear Shimano R300 that are custom fitted to your foot. They have good ventilation. For socks, I wear the DeFeet super lightweight white cycling socks.



Since you took HTFU and ride in cooler weather off the table, I will suggest losing weight. The bigger the mass the more energy is used to keep the body cool and larger volume causes higher internal body temperatures. Liggett commented on this yesterday during the TdF. The climbers do very well in the heat where guys like Hushog and Cancellarra suffer.

Also, you are probably mashing the pedals too much. You might try to keep your feet in the top of the shoes throughout the pedal stroke. Forget about the scraping the gum off the bottom. This visualization will de-emphasize the quad and take some pressure off the bottom of your foot. In reality, no matter how hard you try not to, you will still push down on the pedal but the thought of keeping the foot in the top will smooth out your pedal stroke. Also, I would suggest spinning faster which works well with keeping the foot in the top of the shoe. Faster is usually better and it may result in better leg / foot cooling.

Some are just better in the heat than others and in the end you may have to HTFU if you want to ride in the heat.