Giro Tracker Bike Shoes Review

In mountain biking, the connection points are worth stressing. Good grips, gloves, pedals, and shoes keep you on the bike. All the more so when you’re riding flat pedals with pins, your shoes matter. Grip matters. Giro knows a thing or two about that. A year and a half ago, I was stoked to start riding in the Giro Latch, and I’ve loved them all the way through the soles in places. I picked up a pair of the new Giro Tracker to try something different, and they’re doing the trick.

Giro Tracker Shoes Features:

• BOA L6 Fit System make for easy on-the-fly fit adjustments
• Dual layer EVA midsole offers supportive cushioning
• Lightweight textile uppers with PU overlays for durability
• Sticky rubber soles stick to flat pedals for enhanced bike control
• Weight: 695 grams per pair (as measured on my scale for size USM 10.5)
• MSRP: $130

Giro Tracker: A Versatile Bike Shoe

Let’s get this out of the way. The Giro Trackers are positioned as a general-purpose flat pedal cycling shoe. They’re not mountain bike specific. That’s okay. The marketing behind them does not matter to me. What matters to me is their performance when I ride my mountain bike. I chose them because the features they had seemed like a good recipe for MTB. After a couple months of solid testing, I’m more on the marketers side. The beauty of these shoes is in their versatility, not necessarily their sole devotion to MTB.

Ultimately, the deciding factor for me was the foam. The Trackers use an EVA foam midsole, a bit of a standard in the shoe world generally. That’s a key difference from Giro’s Latch, which utilizes their own proprietary Mute foam. The trouble with EVA is that, over the course of time, it has a tendency to compress and lose its springiness. Shoes that start off cushy and lively can turn stiffer and less responsive.

How does a shoe get to that point? Hard, repetitive impact. Sound like mountain biking to you? Me too. After two months of hard riding in the Trackers, I do see signs of permanent compression in some areas of the midsole. At this point, it’s minor, but I do suspect that it will limit the overall lifespan of the shoes. In contrast, the Mute foam in my Giro Latch shoes remains almost entirely unaltered after a year and a half of hard abuse. In testing the Trackers, I have to wonder why they didn’t use Mute foam for these shoes as well.

After all, many other aspects of the shoes have mountain biking written all over them. The biggest component of that is the rubber. The Tack rubber that the Trackers employ is the same reliable, durable, and sticky stuff I loved so much on the Latch. It sticks to pins like nobody’s business, and wears out only after a very long period of time. The Trackers wear it well, and they’re all the better for it. Grip-wise, I couldn’t ask for much more.

The Trackers also adjust and lock in perfectly. The BOA Fit System is super effective and easy to use. Clockwise twists ratchet the wire tighter in small increments, while lifting the dial with a click releases the system. In testing, I found the dial to be just as precise as I wanted it to be, never finding myself “in between clicks”. Fit was always on point, though it did sometimes take an initial adjustment followed by a step or two, then a final adjustment, just to allow the wire to equalize.

The location of the dial on the tongue helps to keep it out of the way during crashes too, which is in line with much of the rest of the shoe’s durability. The textile upper of the shoe is a sturdy, abrasion-resistant material. I’ve ridden through thorns, brushed up against trees, and scraped across rocks while riding, and the upper looks about the same as it did when I got the shoes. The PU overlays also add to the durability, glancing hits off and preventing ripping at some of the common abrasion points.

And comfort? I think there are two components of comfort for MTB shoes: fit and heat management. Let’s start with fit. The heel cup and footbed of the Tracker is ideal, in my opinion. The toe box is a nice middle-ground between wide and narrow – fairly standard – and I feel it works well with the shoes. The only characteristic of the Trackers that doesn’t fit exactly how I’d like is the tongue. It’s a bit long, and it put some pressure on my ankle during testing that took time to get used to. It was never the source of any blisters or chafing, but it wasn’t the most comfortable to me, and shortening the tongue by just 1 centimeter would eliminate the issue.

As for heat management, the Trackers are a boon. The upper material wicks well, and doesn’t require perforation in order to let your feet breathe. Even riding in the peak heat of the summer, my feet were just fine. Temperature regulation was a strong point. Now that the rains of Fall have started, it’s become more noticeable that the breathability of the fabric also means that water gets into the shoes easily, but hey. That’s what warm socks are for, right? That’s always been my method, at least.

As a whole though, I do think the Trackers are best categorized as a general cycling shoe that you can mountain bike in. While so much of their design works for the hard-hitting nature of mountain biking, the EVA midsole is a limiting factor for their longevity if used for MTB. Nonetheless, they’re a nice looking pair of shoes for a reasonable price, and they work just fine as a cross-over biking/casual shoe. If that’s what you’re looking for, the Tracker may be a good fit.

Fit: I normally wear shoes in the US Men’s 10.5 to 11 neighborhood. I tested a 10.5, and found them true to size.

Buy Now: Available at Backcountry.com