Gotta be the shoes?

Well, after coming off the trail mid-October, my beloved Diadora Chili MTB shoes were pretty trashed. Figured it was time to more-or-less retire them and just have them set back for emergency use. Picked up a nice pair of Diadora Speed Racer Road shoes for road training and I moved my Diadora Geko MTBs over from road to trail duty.

Now, after I came home, I didn't even ride for 10 days. That first ride afterwards was still with the Gekos; the road shoes still hadn't been delivered. Just a normal ride, same speeds I would normally average over the course.

Didn't ride for 7 days after that. Got back on the bike on Monday, with the new road shoes, and have done 5 rides this week. Every ride has been between 1.5 - 2.5 mph faster in average that what I normally ride on those courses. On Thursday I set a best time/speed mark for any of these rides, and that goes back over four years of ride data. Even kicked it the last two days riding thru brutal winds we've had.

Question is: Can simply changing shoes make that much of a difference or has something just magically happened to me? Thing is, these aren't even high-end, super-stiff, ready-for-the-peleton racing shoes. Nice shoes they are, but still just something of a nice sport road shoe.

Not sure what's going on, but it's got me feeling pretty good about my riding.

Maybe I should actually buy a road bike, instead of using my K2 Zed decked out in 1.25" slicks?

Then again, I wonder what would happen if I'd finally commit to ending my pack a day smoking habit!