Bauer 160s on a Sunday Afternoon

As predicted, Santa brought me a pair of Bauer Supreme 160 skates.  Pretty exciting, and lots of ooh's and aaah's at the bright tiger yellow waxed laces that one of his elfs had put on them.  Saddest thing was, Xmas being on a Thursday and the Ice Arena being closed then and boxing day and we being out for a late xmas lunch on Saturday and commitments on Saturday night, it was only on Sunday that we'd be able to begin the painful process of breaking them in.

So I picked up B shortly after lunch and we met up with Jess and Craig at the Arena.  It was pretty quiet for a Sunday in terms of numbers.  Which was nice because it let us adults concentrate on the new(ish) skates we each had, and let B get on with doing the ten year old thing with school and hockey friends he bumped into.

Craig and Jess have also put wax laces onto their skates.  Jess seems to have slotted into her new Bauers with little or no pain, and is quite proud of her neon pink laces.  Craig is a bit dubious of his deep red laces and their length, having to retie them every ten or twenty minutes.  He's also suffering a bit from foot pain in his new skates.  I'm not sure if that's a sign that the fit isn't right, or is akin to the pain I felt when wearing my new skates on ice for the first time.  He has a oddly shaped foot but his Vapour skates are relatively rigid compared to a true beginner skate so the jury is still out about the source of discomfort.  As for me and my new Bauers, I'd forgotten how much it hurts to break in a new pair of skates!  And how debilitating it is to one's apparent skills.  At least I know there's a good reason for it and have the incentive to skate my way through the pain for a few hours.

Me and B stayed until stumps for the session, although there were several moments when I was tempted to get off early and relieve my feet from the all round constricting pain that my tightly bound bauers were causing.  However, there were also moments when I could feel the support of the boot while doing simple maneuvers and the 'solidity' of the blade's contact with the ice, so I hung onto these portents of a happy future and kept on going.  It was really nice at the end when I took off the boots and the immediate relief flooded over my feet - with no lasting pains of any description once the boots were off (in this way they're even better than my Vapor inlines, where I have a couple minutes of 'outstep' pain once I remove them).

Only about four more hours of this breaking in process to go.  Hopefully will have it done before season training recommences after new year.