Custom boots! There must be a skating god!

 So what do you know... The stars aligned and I traveled to Riedell factory in Red Wing, Minnesota and I've ordered custom boots!

You know I concluded a while ago that I needed custom boots. The Riedell was the most obvious choice as I was in Riedell before and happy. The new Riedell stock boots don't suit me anymore because the toe box was raised and it is too high for me. But custom should work...

The driving distance from my location to Riedell factory is 6 hours, and I would have to be there on a work day. To make the trip in one day would be a stretch. I've never drove by myself for more than 2 hours at a time and it would be inconvenient to drag somebody else along.

But! An opportunity presented in Minneapolis for Monday October 18, between 1 and 3pm that would help my career. More than that, the previous Sunday I had to travel one hour into that direction for an event. So I figured it was a sign! 

For the Sunday drive I caught a beautiful sunny day and the road was on the side of the Mississippi river. I got to the hotel just as it was getting dark.

I had appointment at Riedell for Monday between 9 and 10.30 am. I have made a list with all the problems I wanted covered. Measurements and pictures were taken. I tried a stock boot and notes were made on how to modify the last for myself compared with the stock last. The sole will be modified to help the pronation. The boots should be ready in 2 months but at that point the factory was out of white leather for 3 weeks. 

Then I drove an hour to get to the other event. And then I had a six hours drive back home. This was all on expressway and I was prepared to stop and sleep at a hotel if I needed, but it went surprisingly fast and event less.

Now the waiting begins...

Monthly skating review: progress and goals adjustment

 I'm reverting to the old format of having, at the beginning of each month, a report for the last month and a plan for the current month. Spoiler alert... no progress and... no goals, I use this mostly to keep me motivated to keep going. Anyway...

Last month I struggled to have the blades re adjusted on my old boots that were rebuilt. It didn't go well at all.  I approached all this blade alignment, combined with the need to break in the rebuilt boots, very patiently and methodically. I skated just half an hour at first, then I increased the time but took breaks to play with the blade alignment. It is painful, time consuming and emotionally exhausting. I'm not even frustrated anymore, I'm just flat out emotionally broken.

 The problem is that my old boots were collapsed towards inside because I pronate. The rebuild process made the boots stiffer so now I have support,  but it didn't fix the collapse of the boot. More than that, after the rebuild I had to have the boots punched to accommodate the inside ankle bone. That accentuated the collapsed feeling. To add to that the right boot it is worse because the blade wasn't actually moved towards the inside as much as I requested because of the the plugs that covered the old screw holes.

What I feel is: Skating forward it s hard to maintain an outside edge. To adjust I moved the blade (at the heal part, as outside edges balance on the back of the blade) more towards inside, and more, and more... I moved so much so much that I couldn't start a forward inside edge... I was feeling my whole foot collapsing towards outside. So I moved the blade a little towards outside, until I've felt the most balanced. But still, I cannot hold an forward outside edge securely. It is especially frustrating for long fast dance edges, where I start on a solid outside edge and I feel it sliding on an inside edge slowly but truly. 

Skating backwards is affected by the blade position on the front of the boot, and there is where I have the problem with the right boot previous screw holes. I cannot hold the outside edge. The left boot is better, but still not perfect obviously.

 At some point I decided to not think about the alignment and just skate. I've realized that the control is much better at slow speed. I feel I can work in not really perfecting, but getting balance awareness on double 3 turns and brackets... for an eventual Gold MITF test. I definitely feel I cannot go fast safely.

All in all I don't think it is worth it to keep investing money, time, energy and emotion in this old boots. So, the plan, at this point, is to skate what I can, when I can, with no goals. The next step is to order new boots.