Originally Posted by tjspiel

Things improved dramatically this week but it had been a brutal winter. .. I went for a spontaneous ride one night. I felt... freer and more active…But it was more than that.

It was my feet.

I was wearing sneakers instead of the hiking boots I'd been wearing all winter long.,,
It was still very cold that night and though I had wool socks under my sneakers I wouldn't have been able to ride that way very long. So I'm left wondering what I'm going to do for footwear for next winter. For many years I went the booty route but most of them aren't very durable and they're kind of a pain to put on. I thought about the 45Nrth boots but couldn't justify the price. I'm really not interested in clipless for winter riding anyway.

Ideas?

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

This past Monday (12/30/13) I did my 14 mile commute at about 15°F and tried a new set of foot coverings that IMO that kept my feet significantly warmer than usual. In the past I had bought a pair of neon green shoe covers made by Gore-Tex, for wet riding. During the winter, I use platform pedals with toeclips, and my usual footwear is thin and thick socks, running shoes and Totes rubber overshoes. I use plastic bags over my running shoes to put on the Totes more easily (see the sequence below).

So with the additional Gore-Tex shoe coverings at 15ºF, I did not perceive cold until about mile 10, and I did not feel cold in the sense of permeating the soft tissues of my foot until about mile 12, but it was tolerable. At about mile 12 I have a downhill run of several hundred yards that irreversibly drains the heat from my extremities. The next day at 21ºF, I rode without the Goretex, and started feeling cold at about mile 9 and finished significantly colder at my mile 14 destination than the day before.