Fancy Italian Footwear, Part IX

Well, the new season is officially underway, as our first local meet just happend this past weekend.  I was interested in seeing how things went with the new skates, and overall I felt it went pretty nicely:

I skated two dance events, three figure events, and one loop event.  I did have a fall in loops on the warm up, and had a very poor skate in my first figure event, but overall I was pretty happy with how I skated.  I really like the new dance plates - I feel much more secure on them, and I think it really helped in the competition setting.  The figure skates still need a little more break-in time (I had to take them off between events because skating in them is ok but standing in them is still not fun), but overall I thought I did pretty well there too.

As for my loop skates, I had decided a while ago that my current combo of yellow rubber/brown rubber was just too soft.  I kept in in through the competition because I didn't want to change things right before skating, but I did order some green urethane cushions to try.  Luckily, I was able to test them out this week before the sickness set in.

Hard/Medium rubber combo

Extra flexible urethane cushions

I found the green cushions to be more useable than any of the harder urethane cushions for the loop skating.  The strange thing was that with the rubber, it seemed to soften as I skated on it more, but with the urethane, it seems to get harder.  I want to try this out for a few weeks to see how I like it, then figure out which cushions I am going to stick with.  I really wish Roll Line had another level of rubber hardness between their current medium and hard levels.  The medium is just too soft, but the hard is too stiff when I have it on the bottom.  I still don't know how I feel about the urethane overall for the loop skating, but it does seem to get rid of a lot of the subcurving problems I was having with the too soft rubber.  I may try mixing the yellow rubber/green urethane in the future, but I want to give this set up with the urethane a chance on different floor conditions before mixing it up again.

I don't know.  I am just sort of annoyed that I am having so many problems with my loops, despite skating ok at the competition.  I want to explore all of the options for cushion set-ups to make sure I am using the ones that will work best for me.  I guess I had sort of hoped I would have been more settled with those skates by now, but I suppose as long as I am good with them by the end of the season, that is what is really important.