I'm trying to change my boots from December. It's 5 months now.... My old boots were Riedell, I tried to buy Riedell again, and I've got 2 defective boots one after the other... But I also found out that from when I had my old boots, Riedell changed the design, they raised the toe box of the boots, and that makes all boots from Riedell feel too high for my foot.
I've found a local bootfitter specialized in SP Teri. This is a small company that specializes in custom boots. It has stock models but there are not always in stock. I scheduled a fitting hoping for the best. I was measured at 6.5 and I was offered a model called Zero Gravity, a newer, lighter model as the older ones are heavy, and also low cut in the back fitting with my preference in doing Ice Dancing and MITF, while still offering support for jumping. Size 6.5 felt short, I felt my toe hitting the end of the boots while standing straight, not when I was bending the knees, but after like 20 minutes in them I started cramping. I went into size 7, they felt almost too good, like too big. But being that the 6.5 was too small, the bootfiter said with an insole (Sp Teri has a thick one) the 7 would be just right. So I crossed my fingers and bought them.
On ice, the first feeling was that they are too big... They weren't heat molded so they weren't yet tight around my foot, but also they felt long. I measured the insole and it is exactly same length as my old boots. I hoped that what I was feeling as too big was just the contrast between the very tight heels (locked in by a special SP Terry padding)and the still loose front. The nice thing about these boots is that it didn't feel like I needed to break them in at the ankle. I did hurt and I had a blister at the back edge of the boot, from a wrinkle in the fabric, so I made a trip to the bootfitter to soften that.
The next few days on ice it went relatively well. The blade is definitely not aligned, and again the boot was not tight yet, so the edges are not exact. But crossovers, chasses, stroking, forward and backward, no problem... I've realized I wasn't finding my sweet spot on the blade going backwards mostly on Mohawks and 3-turns. That could be my not perfect technique. But I've red about the boots and realized their heel is low, also the new insole is flat. I know my previous boots had also low heel, but I had a high heel insole.
The next week I "worked" at the insole. SP Teri was advertised as a custom insole that it is gonna conform to my feet, I thought it is a memory form type of material that is gonna mold as the gel molded in my ski boots. It didn't feel it's happening. Besides the low heel situation, I was also hurting under the right heel, from what I've realized was adjustment for pronation (so a customization). I also I had no arch support. As I tighten and tighten the boots I put my feet to sleep that means that I was collapsing my arch. I need to feel the space from underneath, instead of from above. I took another trip to the bootfiter to pick up another insole and different sizes cork arches, and different kind of wedges and heel lifters that I was supposed to play with to see what I liked best. It was a very unpleasant skating week. I was mostly off ice, taping extra bits to the insole and... hurting. The good thing that came out of it is that I finally felt the boots tight and a little more controllable, and then again, still not as secure as I would want them. After all that hurting I ended up putting in my old superfeet insoles. They have high arch support and raised heel, but they hurt a little under the right arch as they were ground by another bootfitter.
So my boots started to feel tighter but still not secure. At this point, I started to think again that the boots may be a little big (long) as SP Teri has a rounder heel to accommodate that special padding to lock in the Achilles's tendon, this could add few millimeters in length. Then I was thinking that I'm not used yet with the low back cut. I would like to try a regular cut boot to check this feeling, in both 6.5 and 7... I'm not seriously thinking that I need another boots, but more as a hopefully confirmation that I'm in the right boot.
I plan to skate a little more, hopefully I get more used with the boots low back, hopefully they conform to the foot even more. I will now start to pay attention to what the blades feel like so I can eventually have them aligned.
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