Giro

Empire ACC Limited Shoes - Men's

If the design Giro's creative engineering department cooked up for the men's Empire ACC Limited Shoes seems familiar to you, then you're not alone. For us, they recall the mountaineering boots we saw on the swarthy adventurers scrambling up slopes of scree or trundling well-laden across a granite spine in the pages of mid-century geographical society publications. By using a water-resistant waxed cowhide upper, non-stretch laces reminiscent of red paracord in form and function, and D-rings instead of lace holes, Giro pays homage to those romantic artifacts of mountaineering history in contemporary cycling shoes.

Of course, they're still cycling shoes, and no amount of dusty magazine nostalgia is going to propel a bike up an alpine road. That's where the ACC sole comes in. Built by Easton from the venerable EC90 carbon, the ACC sole has a low 6.5mm stack height to put your foot as close to the pedal as possible, eliminating intervening material that might absorb power. It's also one of the stiffest soles in the industry. That's not a surprise — it is Easton, after all — but the fact that cyclists of Wiggins' caliber still insist on riding shoes with the ACC sole, despite Giro having released an updated model, so you know that the power transfer to weight ratio is world class.