Last year when I was wrapping up the day at the Arizona Ironman I decided to check out the vendor booths to see what cool things I might be interested in and I happened upon the XTENEX booth. They were showing off some pretty cool laces for tennis shoes and I decided that since I am a fan of slipping shoes on and off (read, LAZY) I'd give them a try. It didn't hurt that they were giving volunteers a break on the price either.
I got the laces home and after a little trial and error I found that they worked rather well on my favorite pair of New Balance shoes. They worked well for slipping on and off and to my surprise worked well with no adjustment for running. After quite a few weeks of using them I decided to refurbish a pair of motorcycle boots that I had owned for quite a bit of time and I wondered if the XTENEX would work on them as well...
If you are a wearer of laced boots you know that while the fit is awesome, the process of putting them on and taking them off can be quite a chore, do it more than twice in a day and you opt for a different pair of shoes. I even use laced boots with zippers on the side, because they offer the fit I want, with the ease of use I desire. The only bad thing is that zippers have issues when it comes to overall comfort and then occasionally they catch on things on a motorcycle as well. Not to mention the zipper seems to allow a whole lot more cold air flow in the winter and they do not stop water from getting in the boot at all.
So, after wondering for a while, I dropped an email to the folks at XTENEX and asked if they had a lace that would work on my boots (I had remembered a comment about military boots at the booth.) They responded quickly and before I knew it I had a pair of black laces for my boots, ready to try for a spin.
The process of lacing the XTENEX laces on shoes or boots is the same, just different than using normal laces. The XTENEX laces have little bulges that keep the lace from slipping through an eyelet that are reduced to flat when the lace is pulled from either side. To set a shoe/boot up with them you simply place the bulges where they need to be when the footwear is normally worn and that's it, Getting the perfect bulge placement takes a little trial and error, but once done that's it. The XTENEX laces expand enough to let your foot in and out, but do not do so much when you normally wear your footwear. Basically the shoe or boot stays put.
Getting the spacing on my boots took a bit of trial and error, but after 5 rides I identified where things were either too loose or too tight, fixed it and now I can easily slip the boots on and off with relative ease. Yeah, a zippered boot is easier, but these boots with the XTENEX laces feel better fitted and feel better on a long ride.
The only issue I have to deal with is making sure the tongue on the boot does not get folded on itself when I put my boots on, but other than that I really like how the XTENEX have made this pair of boots a lot more easy to use.
While slipping the boots on and off was my original goal for wanting to try the XTENEX laces I found that the best thing that they did was make my boots feel good all the time. If you've used laced boots when riding you know that sometimes you make them too tight and sometimes too loose and that every once and a while you get the perfect fit. Well, the XTENEX laces, once properly set, give you that perfect fit EVERY TIME.
Well worth the price, I'll be using XTENEX laces on all my laced boots from here on out.
Want to get your own? Find them here - http://www.xtenex.com/
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