I hope I'm posting in the right section
I'm a new adult skater and I have a month-old pair of Riedell 255TSs that I skate on usually 2-3 times a week since my purchase. I was lucky to have bought them in a pro shop with a really attentive fitters knowledgeable with both figure skates and feet and they spent at least 2 hours making adjustment to my skates right out of the box. They asked me a lot of questions my feet but since I lack a general sense of body awareness due to lack of prior athletic experience, I'm afraid I probably misled them and caused them to make the wrong adjustments. I couldn't even accurately describe where something felt wrong or if something was too tight or too loose, and hey, it was news to me that my ankles pronated!
While I was testing out the skates for a couple of trial runs (they had me test it out after making blade alignment adjustments) I told the guy I experienced ankle pain after skating for 30+ minutes, especially on my right foot. He asked me if the boot was hitting my navicular bone and I was just like "Huh? Yeah, I guess so." since I was feeling
something unpleasant in that general area. He ended up punching out the ankle area, but he also said that it might have to do with the ankle pronating which would necessitate adjusting the blade even further to the left to compensate.
Punching it out seemed fine for the first couple of times I went out on ice afterwards (but only for short durations), but now that I'm skating for longer periods I'm not sure whether that just exacerbated the situation by taking out ankle support that I actually needed? I seem to have the ankle pain mostly in my right foot--the right boot has been punched out more than the left, and my right foot still pronates more noticeably than the left and angles towards the inside edge. Also, I've began to notice that my heel on my right foot tends to lift up slightly while skating. I've never noticed this before since it is really slight and like you probably figured out by now, I'm really clueless and unaware
The ankle pains happen on both feet but are most pronounced on my right, and also seems to increase whenever I get a good knee bend, but the heel raise only happens on the right. I don't know if these are related.
What should I do? If it is indeed a matter of punching the boots out too much, is that sort of thing reversible? I know that blades are replaceable on the 255TS boot but how hard is it to make a blade alignment adjustment if it's "permanently mounted"? I know that ankle pain is a fairly common concern so I'm wondering whether my aches are just normal. It's also helpful to note that right now I'm only taking group classes and working on Alpha/Beta elements and getting in 3x week practice + group lesson max, but the fitter said I could do a proper bend in the 255TS so I don't know if boot stiffness is a factor here or not.
I'm at uni now and I am not familiar with the pro shops at the rinks I go to here, but I'm making a trip home soon and I'm planning to drop by my home pro shop to get this checked out. However, I want to be able to explain myself more eloquently and most importantly, correctly, when I get there! I think it's less of a problem with the navicular bone and more of a problem with the arch region below that bone, but I didn't know that back then! I searched "arch pain" in the forums and I saw a thread about arch pain and used skates, but I bought my skates brand new just a month ago so I'm not really sure what's going on. I usually also wear arch supports with regular shoes (nothing fancy, just an off-the-rack kind) since I had arch pain with my left foot while walking, though not in the same area as when I skate. The inserts seemed to have alleviated my walking discomfort, but I don't know whether I could, or even should, just slip them in my skates?
Last but not least, I bought black boot covers for my skates and practice with them on regularly. However, it seems to have made the laces of my boot grayish and dingy, and worse, the entire "inside" part of both boots have this huge unsightly grayish-blackish smudge that didn't come off at all when I tried wiping down the boot with a damp cloth dipped in soapy water. I haven't tried any other methods of trying to clean it but it definitely looks like some kind of transfer from the boot cover to the skates. I've been drilling backward pumps recently and I'm working on getting the free foot right next to the skating foot after the push, so there's been a lot of boot to boot contact on the inside part of the boot lately, which corresponds with the smudges. They were just generic boot covers I got from a shop and I think they are made of lycra, but I'm not sure. I'm not overly obsessed with boot aesthetics but it seems a little ridiculous that a boot cover would actually mess up the boot when its main purpose is to protect it.
Any idea how I could clean it off?
Ah, so many questions...
Thanks in advance to anyone who even gets through reading my lengthy spiel, much less answering it