New Skates

On Sunday after skating I went immediately to Bladeworx in Hawthorn to buy some ice skates. The rental ones were awful and were really hurting my feet, so there was no point in dallying around. Unfortunately, due to ice skating not being popular in Australia, and also due to figure skating being even less popular than ice hockey, there wasn't a lot to choose from. Worse still, male figure skating is at the bottom of the ladder in terms of popularity. The owner of the store told me he sold about 60 pairs of girls skates for every 1 pair of boys skates. Hence, when I tried sizes there were none in the store in my size. He ordered a pair of men's skates in my size and I came back on Tuesday afternoon to pick them up. They were jet black Risport RF-4's with a MK Club 2000 blade.

They sure were tight. Being leather and not yet broken in, I knew they would give a bit as I wore them, but that first day I was very close to asking them to order in the next size up. The owner assured me that they would stretch a bit though, so I took them and also bought some soakers (soft blade covers that soak up water) and hard guards (hard blade covers to protect the blade when walking in the boots).

I wore my skates for the first time on the Wednesday night, and they started to loosen up a bit. However, I wasn't used to having such a noticeable toe pick -- the rental skates' toe picks were very much worn down and barely there. As a result, I hit that toe pick about once every 10 seconds. It took a long, LONG time to adjust my skating style to avoid the pick. I still catch it occasionally and it's been almost a week! I fell over for the first time unintentionally in that session when I caught my toe pick yet again, and it didn't feel real good! However, my skates were a million times better than those awful rental skates, so I knew I would get used to them. At least they did not hurt my feet. I could now wear nice thin socks instead of the really thick ones I needed with the rental skates.