They are made of rubber and are a stretch fit over your runners. They cost about $12.00 Canadian and were purchased at Lee Valley Tools. They are made by a Taiwanese company called TPR. No other info is available in the package. I stepped out my door and on the way down the wood deck steps I slipped and landed on my butt. Just a few bruises but not enough to keep me from my run. While I was down on my butt, nursing my bruises, I put on the cleats. I adjusted them carefully to be symmetrical and I pulled the heel up as far as it would go. I began running and found they seemed a bit bouncy, but soon got used to it. They were very noisy because of the cleats crunching into the ice and asphalt. The tops seemed to bite into the top of my toes a bit, but this feeling soon went away and I suffered no blisters or other effects from their tightness. I think it was just a case of “Hey I’ve got these tight things on my feet and maybe I should panic about it!” Like I said, I soon got used to it and they did not seem to affect my pace or gait and did not slow me down. About a third of the way into my run I noticed they were starting to creep on my feet so that they seemed to be destined to slip off. I decided to ignore this and keep an eye on it. I managed to finish the run even though at the end the cleats seemed to be very unbalanced and askew. They were not at all in the same position I had installed them. The cleats seemed to be shifting off my feet, but they also seemed to stop shifting after a while once they got into the position they “wanted” to be in. They looked like they were going to fall off but they did not and they continued to work well. Before the run the cleats were very sharp and after the run they had not worn down much, but were a bit rounded. I think they are not designed for running but for walking.
Pros: Inexpensive. Relatively light-weight. Easy to put on. You won’t slip on ice. Stable in spite of the very gradual shifting on your feet as you run.
Cons: Not adjustable in any way. You have to buy small medium or large for your shoes. May pinch your feet a bit if the size is not just right. Will not stay in place, but they wander on your foot. Not tested on trails. On trails, twigs and debris MAY snag between your shoe and the rubber straps. Finally the NOISE is louder than a car sneaking up behind you! Your hearing will be impaired and this requires more than your usual degree of alertness for hazards sneaking up behind you.
Conclusion: Suitable for easy training runs on smooth surfaces such as icy asphalt. Not suitable for racing. I hate wearing them but it’s better than not training or slipping.
This first picture is of the tops of the shoes. In the picture, the left shoe has the cleats properly adjusted, but the right one is the result after 5 miles. You can see a huge shift, but as I said, the cleats did their job anyway. It justs looks bad:
The second picture is of the bottom of the shoes. The left shows before the run, the right after 5 miles. Again you can see the shifted cleats. At what mileage you would have to stop and re-adjust the cleats is not known…
The last picture shows what they look like out of the package. One is right side up, the other shows the bottom with the cleats.
That is the review in a nutshell. Karen C, if you read this maybe you can post a similar review about yak tracks, which I know nothing about.
I was gonna ask how they compare to yaktrax but I see by your last paragraph, you likely don’t know. I wear yaktrax and find they don’t slip around on the shoe like the ice cleats but they do have the same problem with twigs and stuff on trails. I suspect the cleats dig in better than the trax but the trax also don’t bother the feet as much and the noise seems less than you describe. That’s my 2 cents.
Great review, John! I have seen the cleats you describe on folks at XC races, and have even picked lost ones from the trail. They’re an economical, reasonable investment for short, flat, icy distances.
I dug way back in my archives and found this review for Yaktrax that I wrote last winter. Though they cost more than the Lee Valley cleats, the Yaktrax Pros are still much less expensive than a pair of spiked trail shoes, and I consider them the best value for my money. There is still that warping factor happening with these on some folks, especially if there are steep downhills involved, but the trax still seem to perform better overall, in my experience, than the cleats. Nothing is ever totally slip-proof, but winter runners learn from experience what works best for each person, each set of conditions.
You might also want to check out this review of Icebugs, as well (Gord sells them at his Calgary store). Though I haven’t managed to swing buying a pair of these yet, I look forward to trying them out sometime.
Here’s another interesting discussion on shoes for running on icy surfaces:
http://www.sport-groups.com/post/5016/Shoes_for_running_on_icy_surfaces.html
These look like a super cheap version of a product I have been using for years. It’s called the Spiky (www.spiky.com). Its all about the quality of rubber and the quality of steele they use in the spike. That cheap stuff is disposable. Im not a rep or anything just a really big fan of thier product.
Spikys! Ben Im totally with you. I lead a running club and basically our whole group uses them. I love my Spikys. I did have a cheap pair my first winter and the spikes wore down in like one run. You have to get the real deal ones, don’t skimp on the knock offs.
I’ve been using Yaktrax Pro ever since. I just retired my last pair after almost 500 km. Some of those km were on bare asphalt in between patches of snow and ice during the fall and spring when such conditions exist. It just didn’t seem worth it to remove them for a few meters of bare asphalt. I retired the Yaktrax because the coils had broken and were spiraling off the shoe. They don’t work well on extremely hard and cold bare ice. Unless they are very new and sharp, they just act like skates over hard black ice. But I still think they are the best solution.