So my SP Teri Super Teris came in today. I haven't had a chance to go out on the ice yet with them but I've tried them on. They fit, but they definitely seem tighter than the riedells. Which, makes sense, since they have more padding, are stiffer boots, and have a slightly different construction. And I definitely feel some places I might need punched. They currently have Wilson Excels on them, but I assume the phantoms should be coming in over the next few days.

As for what I'm going to do with the reidells, well, I've decided the sell the blades, probably on ebay to recoup some of the money spent on them. The boots, since they're still almost immaculately white on the outside, I plan to use as a displays and take with me to events and get autographs on. I thought it'd be a pretty neat idea. I know Dorothy Hamil is coming to Austin like next week, so she might be the first.

I'll keep y'all updated.

Don't be so quick to punch them out. When I first tried on my skates, I thought they would need to be punched out, but my boot fitter told me to wait until I got them heat molded and broke them in before I got any areas punched out. I did, and it turns out, I don't need it to be punched out now. It was just the normal tightness of the boot.

I would also wait to punch out-take it from us women, as you wear a snug shoe, it will stretch out and conform to your foot, usually in a short amount of wear time (but sometimes with a bit of pain-the agony of de-feet?).

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Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

Definitely don't punch them out too soon. Once you get the blades mounted, don't go over-zealous on skating too much in them too soon. Either SP Teri or your pro shop should give you some basic advice/hints on the initial break-in. It behooves you (in terms of the life of the boots and the comfort of your feet) to follow that advice.

Harlick provides the following suggestions/recommendations on their website (and the same would apply to the SP-Teris).

"What is the proper way to break-in my new boots?
During the break-in it will be necessary for you to occasionally stop and retie your boots. This is due to the stretching of the new laces, and the boots conforming to the shape of your foot and ankle.

Begin by putting your boots on and lacing them leaving the top two hooks unused.

Skate in your boots in this manner for approximately 4 to 6 hours. This time should be accumulated time. For example you may skate the first day for 30min. to and hour and the next day for 1 to 2 hours, your choice. Continue skating until you have accumulated the necessary time. During this time you should not be doing any jumps, spins or other moves that will cause you to do deep knee bending.

Next lace your boots leaving only the top hook unused. Continue skating as above for another 4 to 6 hours following the same precautions as above.

Now you can lace them all the way to the top if you desire and begin your regular skating routine.

This may seem like a waste of time and unnecessary. Your boots may feel very comfortable and you will want to perform all of your regular jumps, spins and routines. What could happen if you do, is your boots can break-down instead of break-in. Lacing your boots all the way up and jumping in them before they break-in puts pressure on the boots ankle support and hooks, causing among other things, the boots to crease in the wrong places. This can also put tremendous pressure on the muscles and tendons of your foot and ankle.

Take the time to follow the correct break-in procedures and you will have better performance and fit from your new Boots."

Note... I do only dance and followed a similar procedure when breaking in my latest pair of Klingbeils this summer. Even though I had fairly soft boots (for dance) and even though Klingbeils are reckoned to be "easy" to break in, it took a good week to 10 days (skating 3-4 days a week before work) before I went back to my normal training. It then took probably another month for me to really feel comfortable in them (I had had some design changes like a higher heel and a heel lock incorporated in this pair that I didn't have before... and adjusting to the higher heel took a bit of time.)

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American Waltz... Once, Twice, ???? ...

Q: How many coaches does it take to fix Jen's Dance Intro-3 Problems
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I agree with everyone else's advice to wait on the punching out -- in the meanwhile, get yourself some bunga pads or some other brand of silicon gel pad, to place over the pressure points on your feet or ankles. You can get gel padded ankle sleeves that go all around your ankle, which I found useful when breaking in my new boots recently.

I would not advise lacing them up to the top as soon as Harlick suggests. Rather, I would wait you actually feel the need for the additional support. I am on my third pair of SP Teris and my latest pair (the new KT-2's) are actually have a lower rise and are much easier to break in than my last two pairs. Even so, after skating in them 6 hours a week for the past 4 months, I am still not lacing the top hook yet. SP Teris take a long time to completely break in, and I've found that the boots always tell me when it's time start lacing them all the way up.

Oops, sorry for the weird English there. That's what happens when I edit, then forget to proof read before clicking "send"!

This is no joke. I love my SuperTeris, but they are still blocks of concrete (perfectly molded to my feet!), not creased, and I still don't lace the top hooks. I haven't skated much in the past few years, but I skated somewhat regularly in these for a year after I got them, and was nowhere close to lacing them all the way up. Didn't need to either...they were still perfectly supportive where they were. I will say, though...if you feel you need them punched out, wait a little bit, but don't wait too long. I waited for a few weeks, thinking that I just needed to wear them, and break them in a bit, but my ankle bones were still in agony. Everything else felt wonderful, but the ankle bones were murder. Once I had them punched, it was actually possible to skate without pain, and I wished I'd done it much sooner. SPTeri superteris are Rock. Hard. If you need them punched, do so. (Caveat--mine weren't designed for heat molding like many are now...if you can heat-mold, do that first.)

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www.signingtime.com ~sign language fun for all!

Oh sweet jesus. Concrete blocks are right.

So out on the ice, I followed the harlick instructions and was practically dying. I could move "just fine," but holy hell. I couldn't feel anything from the ankle down. I could see that I was doing what I should be doing, but I did not feel connected to the ice. The only thing I did feel was pressure on my ankle bones and my big toes. My heels feel great though. Perfect fit already. Then my temp coach Barry's son (also a Kevin) got ahold of me, told me Harlick's instructions were crap (no offense to Jen or Harlick) and that since he also has SP Teris (course his are custom, and he's a coach in his own right, he's older than me), he knew exactly what to do. He unlaced the last hole and then hooked them all the way up. The pressure on my ankle bones lessened and I was able to maintain more control. Worst though is that my right foot is bigger than my left, so while my left boot generally feels tolerable, my right boot is like a vice.

Did they fit your skates for your larger or smaller foot? From experience, the skates should be fit for the larger foot--you can always add padding and inserts to the skate of the smaller foot.

I found the opposite to work better. My feet are about 1/4 size different, and I fit my boots to the smaller foot. The other boot gets punched out until it fits.

Padding and inserts compress and are hard to keep in place correctly.

I fit upper end skiers into ski boots this way, and my skate fitter used the same philosophy when he fit me last year.

I guess the reason why they fit me in larger skates was that my feet are a full size apart--there was no way at all I could fit my larger foot in the smaller skate. However, I haven't had any problems. The skates are cozy for one foot and slightly (although not noticeably) roomy for the other.

If your feet are two different sizes, why didn't you go for the SP Teri option of getting a combination length pair of skates? In other words, they will, for an extra, oh, $30 give you one boot of one size and one boot of the other size -- at least that's what I have!!

Of course, it makes the sizing of the blades somewhat tricky...

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They fit to the larger foot. So that makes me assume that this is just part and parcel of the breaking in process. The boot has to stretch, I know that, so this is just going to be a waiting game. Now does anyone have any experience with the hot water on the sock thing?

That makes sense. I think the expensive alternative would be custom made boots.

That's a great idea. I was working on singles when I got the skates, so I bought a factory pair of Riedell Royals. Truthfully, I probably wouldn't have even noticed my feet were different sizes had the skate shop not told me as much. I still can't feel the difference (although I can see it sometimes)!

IceDancer2, I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one with two different sized feet!!

Yep, me too. Punching out and/or stretching can increase the size of a boot by half a size, so that's what George Spiteri recommended when I got fitted. I am glad, too, because if my right boot (my smaller foot) were any bigger, I would be having serious slippage problems.

I forget, did you say you DID heat-mold them already? Are they heat-moldable? I found that my SP Teri KT-2's responded wonderfully to heat molding and I didn't have to punch them out anywhere. However, my previous 2 pairs of SP Teri's were not heat-molded and my ankle bones suffered way too much on the first pair because I didn't know you could punch them out. So when I got the 2nd pair, I punched out the ankles as soon as I had worn them enough to see ankle bone indentations on the inside (which you need to mark with a pen/pencil as soon as you take them off so your pro knows where to punch them out). They still lasted just as long as the previous pair, so punching out didn't seem to make them break down any quicker.

I have not heat molded them, although they are heat moldable. I've noticed they've started feeling much better around the ankle bones, and I don't think that they will need to be punched out there. However, today I left them with the rink owner for punching out the front of the boots. He's been adjustng my blades, and I kept having this problem where I wanted to lean forward and I kept catching my toepicks.

What it was is that my big toe is so much longer than my other toes on each foot that although I got the right size boot (everything else fits perfectly), I keep curling my feet to unsquish my big toes. When I do this, I roll forward on the ball of my foot, and tada, I catch my toepicks. Same when I land, and that REALLY hurts, because I jam my big toes into the front of the boots. So he's going to punch out the front of the boots on the inside side as best has can to accomodate my big toes.

I'd really like to avoid customs >_>

Are you sure you're not sliding forward in the boots? If you are, then your boots are a touch too big. You shouldn't slide at all.

Re: curling toes...I'm not saying that your toe isn't rather long, but I know that I have a toe-curling habit as well, and it has nothing to do with the length of my toes...rather, it's just a habit that I had to learn to break. I just hope your blades weren't adjusted to accomodate for the rocking forward, which is due to toe-curling, because as soon as you break that habit, your blades will be off again.

But maybe I misunderstood you.

(Also...you'll need to keep your toenails very short....I know I'm in a world of pain if I forget to clip them for a while, then try to skate. There's just no room for extra length there.)

__________________
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg."
--Thomas Jefferson

www.signingtime.com ~sign language fun for all!

I'm not sliding forward in the boots. Everything else is secure, especially my heel. And the curling-toe thing is unique to these boots. With my previous pairs of boots, this issue did not exist.

The blades have been adjusted according to one foot glides, not the rocking.

Trust me, I am well aware of the toenail issue and have been trimming almost to the point of daily.

Also (and ignore this if you're already doing this), when you put your boots on, bang the tail of the blades against the floor a couple times to make sure your heel is sitting as far back as possible in the boot. That may help.

Otherwise, it may be that the toe box design of the SP Teri (or at least that model) is not ideal for your particular foot. The punching out will help, of course, especially since you've already invested in these boots.

Different vendors' lasts and toe box shapes vary, which is why some of us can wear one brand comfortably and others of us are in misery the whole time.

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American Waltz... Once, Twice, ???? ...

Q: How many coaches does it take to fix Jen's Dance Intro-3 Problems
A: 5 and counting...

Heat mold them.

While warm they will be as soft a peanut butter. Lace them up extra-extra tight (to the point of hurting). The fore part of the boot will then better conform to your foot & hold it back. Your foot will also better seat back into the ankle/heel area, in effect holding your foot farther back & away from the toe box.

Jon

Just don't do it with the plastic guards on. I learned that the hard way.

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"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg."
--Thomas Jefferson

www.signingtime.com ~sign language fun for all!

Why not? I always do this with guards on and nothing seems strange.

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