Any input would actually be very helpful. My toes do go numb after about an hour or so in the saddle with road shoes w/ cleats, cages and staps.

Adjust the cleats.

There is normally enough travel in the fitting of the cleats to the shoes to allow you to correctly position the alignment. A small twist in the cleat direction (a few degrees) results in a big change in the overall direction of the shoe, and therefore your toe.

Cleats are also usually reversible from left to right shoe, and the net result of doing this is that you can gain or lose 1 cm in and out... er, hard to explain, but the holes for cleat attachment are not set dead evenly, they are set to one side of the cleat... so when you have a cleat on the left shoe the shoe center is closer to the crank, and put the same cleat on the right shoe and the shoe center is further from the crank. Thus you are able to adjust the alignment of your foot left to right so that you aren't having to twist your foot inwards (or outwards) on any part of the stroke.

The key things with cleat alignment:

• Ensure the cleat is fitted so that the ball of your foot is aligned with the crank hole (there's probably a name for that which I don't know).
• Ensure that there is no twist in your foot throughout the stroke.
• Ensure that your knee is a hinge and not a ball socket.

The first two you can get by playing around, the last one is much harder. But if you can set up your bike on some rollers or a power trainer, then jump on board and have someone shine a very thin narrow light straight down your knee... start pedalling, and that light should *not* be moving left to right... it should stay dead straight on your knee throughout the pedal stroke.

If you do find that you're twisting slightly and causing the light to move side to side, then you can use shims between the cleat and shoe to correct this... you want to shim at an angle so that the twist is eradicated... let me find you a picture of this.... actually scrap that, there's a better explanation over here: https://www.cyclefit.co.uk/lewedge.htm

most ****ing hilarious thing I've read all day

Cause when you're hot, you're too much

Hey ankling is good but I find if I think about it too much I get too jerky and inefficient which leads to joint problems. So I do what I did when I ran cross-country/track of imagining my joints moving in circles which does wonders for my form and efficiency. I end up going super fast and when I try to concentrate on bumping up my speed I just end up feeling frustrated at how slow I am going and make jerky movements rather than efficient ones which just makes things worse.

days old but.
Are you using lace up shoes?

-loosen the shoe or skip some of the eyelets.
-get modern shoes and pedals.

Out of curiosity why are you riding with clips and cleats for over an hour? The only reason I can think thayt justifies thier use is if you are a massively strong dude doing match sprints. If you are worried about your feet coming out get some spd-rs. You can add straps to them for sprints if you really need it but I would be amazed if you can pull out of them with the tension all the way up.

all i can say is headwind sucks.