my toes start feeling numbness 15-20 min. sitting in the saddle.

What I've done/doing:
1) Total standing time of one minute for every 15 min. keeps it to a minimum.

2) I've tried various saddles but none have worked yet. The best saddle yet (not cured by any means) is the Fizik Arione. I thought by measuring my sit bones at the LBS and trying a Specialized Alias saddle would work, but 12 minutes into it and I was going numb.

3) Wearing gel bibs from Performance has given the bigest difference from any product.

4) I thought it might be the shoes, but after two pairs and loosly strapping the toebox, I realized that it's not the shoes. After all, it goes away when I'm out of the saddle. If it were the shoes you would think it would get worse when standing because it puts more pressure on my feet.

I'm using Ultegra 6600 pedels.

A friend told me to find out if it's blood circulation numbness or nerve numbness (stop and pinch the area, if it hurts, then it's blood. If it doesn't hurt then it's nerves.). It's nerves.

Anyone else have this problem? Any suggestions on why this is happening?

I have been riding for a few years now and I still have body parts that go numb. It just comes with the sport. One of my toes always goes numb after riding for about 30 min. Most of the time it is road vibration for me. Make sure you aren't clinching/curling your toes when pedaling. Also make sure you are hydrated. That's about all I can think of right now.

numb toes are usually because of the location of the pedal in relation to the nerves in the your foot. Two things: first, try moving your cleat back a bit. In most cases this will solve the problem. The other possibility is your shoes. In either case, talk to your LBS and get their imput. You've dealt successfully with all the other bike/body interface areas, but shoe/pedal interface problems are often overlooked and assumed by the sufferer to just be part of the deal...kind of like skiboots and iceskates not all too long ago.

That use to happen to me. Once I slid my ass back more onto the wings of my Arione - the numbness went away.

You might need a different riding position.

http://www.lightningbikes.com/r84.htm

This might be a dumb question but what temp. are you riding in? My feet freeze in my bike shoes. Even at 52 degrees today my toes were cold after 20 miles. I'm sure poor circulation has something to do with it but my feet get colder much faster in bike shoes.

52F...thin wool socks, maybe shoe covers, and a hat...don't forget the hat.

I definitely try sliding the cleats back.

regarding the temperature, I ride from 20F-100F and it makes no difference.

As far as the shoes go, I'm wearing Sidi and I used to wear Specialized when I rode MTB. No difference. I know that Shimano makes their shoes in a wide, so maybe I'll try that.

Sidi also has wide/MEGAs

My feet start to go numb after about an hour. I just reach down, pull the velcro, refasten it, and the feet are happy again. I think your feet swell a little as you ride. Try it, it is cheap and easy. Then the expensive stuff.

+1 for not clinching the toes. When my feet used to start to go numb, I thought about being light on the pedals, spinning fast, pulling back and around, and lightening the pressure on the pedals.
Also, its expensive, but custom shoes with an carbon fiber bed molded to your foot will spread the forces along your foot. I have Rocket7's and don't have foot problems anymore. www.rocket7.com

Did you buy the shoes and the footbeds? If you only bought the footbeds, what shoes are you using them in? I would love to get some of these, but the price!

I started a thread a few months back on this exact same topic. Got some good feedback then. Might be worth doing a forum search for it. I'm too tired to dig it up for you at the moment. ;) (For what it's worth been doing school work for the last 6 hours straight)

After troubleshooting from suggestions given, it's clear that my shoes are too tight, and that the cleat position was too far forward.

I recently had a fitting, and the placement of my cleats seemed off then. Everything else is dailed in. HOwever, I did make adjustments to see if the seat was it.

Another I'm doing for recovering from metatarsalgia is accupunture. I live in China. This stuff works!

For what it's worth, I was having the same problems right after I switched to clipless pedals/shoes. At first it was because I was strapping the shoes on too tightly. That helped the immediate (15-30 minutes) onslaught of toe numbness, but it still came on after about an hour. So I moved the cleats back and this weekend did an (at least) 3 hour ride with no numbness whatsoever.

Tim.