Assessing heel lift

[kgreene10]

I had a recent thread on custom shoes and received a lot of very useful ideas. Thank you.

I decided to give another go with stock shoes, so I made the rounds to several LBSs today. While trying on shoes, I realized that I have no clue how to assess the degree of heel lift without being in the bike.

For clarity, I’m talking about road shoes and I’m interested in max efficiency as I try to return to racing after a major accident two years ago. Recovery has been very slow, but I was lucky and am on the upswing. This is my last go at racing at age 55, so I don’t want to leave anything on the table. Hence the hand-wringing over heel lift.

In the store, what’s the best way to test for heel lift? if I put weight on the ball of my foot, the heel barely lifts in my current (but wearing out SWorks 6) shoes. In new ones I try on, there is a range from about 1cm to 3cm of lift. Is this indicative of what would happen with cleats attached while pedaling or is it a flawed analogy?

Thanks in advance for your sage advice.