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Written by Alan Starrett
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Wednesday, 31 January 2007 |
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The Lake MXZ series winter shoes are probablly the best selling shoes of all time here at Bikeman. The warmth and durability are legendary. If you have any designs on riding in the winter, on or off road, the Lake winter shoes are the only ones to have. If we have ever gotten a single concern about the Lake winter shoes is that they are a tad narrow for some people. The number one request for a change that we hear is to make them wider for folks with the big 'ol dogs. Well, Lake was hearing the same thing.
Lake probablly offers the most models of shoes with wide versions of anyone in the industry so they know how to make wide shoes. They took that experience and put a wide version MXZ301 into development.
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Lucky for us we are friends with the folks at Lake and they hooked us up with a pair of protoypes to see how the project was coming along. The photos you see here are of the protoype. The obnoxious blue color is for the prototype only to clearly distinguish it from a production model. The full production model would be in the traditional black.
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In my hand out of the box it was indistiguishable to me from the regular version, well the heinous blue color notwithstanding. The telling tale is in the foot however when trying them on side by side with the regular version. Now I don't consider myself to have a wide foot. The standard version fits fine for me. When I tried on the wide prototype it was very obvious there a decent amount of extra room up front in the toe box. Lake's wide version shoes are typically designed around a D/E width and I expect this prototype to be the same.
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The rest of the shoe is the same construction as the standard version. My personal Lake shoes were the original MXZ300's with the lace and velcro closure. I have to say the new Push/Pull Boa closure is ingenious. Push the dial in and rotate to tighten. Pull the dial out and just step out to release. Quick, easy and comfortable.
No official details on production yet but my guess is that if it is released this year we will see it sometime around October. We do know it would be released as a second model in addition to the current model. Most likely it would be named the MXZ301X in similar designation as their other wide models.
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In the meantime Bikeman will be testing the prototype so we can provide you and Lake with feedback on the design. Luckily we have a tester on Team Bikeman.com with a wide foot who just can't bring himself to stop riding regardless of temperature. We should have a bunch of miles on these in month or so we will let you know how it went. |
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