Tie your damn shoes!

especially when
you roll

Mathew Honan reports in Wired, 27 November 07, on How to Lace Your Shoes. He turns to Professor Shoelace (aka Ian Fieggen, an Australian programmer with a shoe(lace) fetish for a rundown of the ins and outs.

Before you tie 'em, you have to lace 'em — and you can choose from among 43,200 perfectly legitimate ways to do it. A smart stringing strategy can actually improve your game, sportswise and otherwise.

The Inside-out Version of Straight (Fashion) Lacing distributes pressure evenly plus keeps the knots & ends to the side. For biking, position them on the outside, away from chains & cranks. Lace the left shoe as pictured here and the right shoe in reverse so that the knots of both shoelaces end up towards the outside. This places the loops and loose ends further away from the bicycle chain, cranks and other moving parts. It evens out pressure and reduces snagging but looks like crap.

1. The lace is run straight across the bottom (grey section) and emerges through both bottom eyelets.

2. One end of the lace (yellow end) runs straight up the right side, is fed into and runs straight across the second set of eyelets.

3. Both ends now run straight up the left side, each skipping one eyelet before feeding in two eyelets higher up.

4. Continue running both ends across the shoe, then straight up two eyelets at a time.

5. At the top of the shoe, the laces end up on the same side and the shoelace knot is tied at that point.