Any road shoe can be used on SPD pedals with this adapter

The rise of gravel riding has led many road cyclists who try this modality to be able to use their road shoes with mountain bike pedals with SPD cleats. The answer, as is often the case in cycling where there are often multiple standards for different bike components, is affirmative.

This is how you can use your road shoes with mountain bike pedals

Compatibility between different bike components can sometimes be complicated. This happens with different bottom bracket standards, wheel axle widths, headsets, etc., and also with cycling equipment in aspects such as cleats that serve as the interface to connect the shoes with the clipless pedal.

In the cycling world, when talking about cleats, a first major differentiation is made between road cleats and mountain bike cleats. The former offer more support surface and, except for Speedplay models, have a shoe attachment consisting of three screws arranged in a triangle. On the other hand, mountain bike cleats, smaller to interfere less when walking, are attached to the shoes with two screws placed in parallel.

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Additionally, Shimano, developer of the SPD standard used by most mountain bike pedals, at one point advocated for the use of these same cleats for road cycling and still today maintains in its catalog single-sided road pedals but with this type of cleat.

To make these pedals compatible with road shoes, Shimano offers the SM-SH41 adapter which precisely allows mounting SPD type cleats on the usual 3-screw attachment of road shoes. This can be very useful for road cyclists transitioning to gravel riding who have several pairs of road shoes at home and do not want to buy specific mountain bike shoes to use SPD double-sided pedals on their gravel bike.

A notable feature of this Shimano adapter is that it has a pair of edges on both sides of the cleat that are very useful if we have to walk, as the issue with SPD cleats is that being metallic, they slip a lot on surfaces other than dirt.

In addition to this adapter offered by Shimano, we can find other conversion options such as the solution offered by pedal manufacturer Wellgo consisting of a metal plate that allows the transformation from 3 to 2 holes, less elaborate than Shimano's but also perfectly valid.

In any case, depending on the style of gravel riding you practice, we recommend using specific mountain bike shoes with SPD cleat attachments because, on one hand, if we have to walk at some point due to terrain conditions, we can do so without any problem unlike with the bare soles of road shoes. On the other hand, the use of adapters between the shoe and the cleat results in a loss of pedaling efficiency by moving the point of force application away from the pedal axle, and this extra elevation means that we have to adjust aspects such as saddle height to pedal correctly.