Skating Impressions, Day 2:I MUCH prefer a 3/8" hollow with these blades. I had great edge grip today. Speed still felt fast, so I didn't give up much by going to 3/8". I really wish that there were a way to accurately quantify increased speed. These subjective impressions may be misleading, especially with differences in ice quality between sessions, plus the nature of subjectivity itself. Better ways of measuring "speed" are cumbersome. I'll have to be satisfied with "they feel fast".
They turn more quickly. I always begin a session by slow skating around the periphery a couple of times, then do forward inside edges down the ice, and back. On the return trip I aim to put the lobes opposite the originals, making it look like a row of circles down the ice. Here's this morning's...
When doing these, I turned in a tighter radius than my freestyle blades. I'm not going at a slow figures pace when doing these. They are done with a bit of edge growling down the ice. These blades
thrive here. I guess that it reinforces my impression about tight hockey turns in the previous report. The feel is different when doing turns, and the photo above shows smaller circles (and more of them) than I usually do with my old Aces (8' rocker after 12 years of use). I mentioned rocker because these blades have a more rounded rocker (7'+). Perhaps that's part of the cause? Is a thinner blade the other contributing factor? I can't answer that.
BTW, I did some really tight hockey turns in the rink corners and ripped up the ice for the hockey players that were scheduled next. Revenge is sweet.
I managed to do some of my weaker threes a bit better today. I expect that I'm slowly adapting. However, my turning-threes traveling down the ice are still off-kilter, so much so that I took a tumble toward the end of the session. I caught an edge, and down I went. I can't yet find the spot on the rocker that lets me do those comfortably.
I became frustrated trying to perform a good spin. I always traveled and made odd flowery tracings trying to find the sweet spot.
Spins are nowhere near what I can do on my familiar old Aces. I took another tumble attempting a spin, and the toe picks hooked my trouser leg. They put a small rip in them.
However, waltz jumps were great on them. They weren't any different from doing them in my Aces. I was able to do a couple of toe loops using the dance picks. I'm not a strong jumper anymore, so take this with a grain of salt.
My feeling so far is mixed. I love the speed, the ability to turn (!), not having a big tail sticking out beyond my heel to step on, but I really wish spins were easier. Keep in mind that I've had spinning trouble with MOST of the other blades that I have used this autumn, with the exception of the MK Pro blades. They feel closest to my ancient Aces when spinning. That points a pretty strong finger at ME being the problem. I'm not adapting easily to different spin rockers in these week-long tests.
One more thing. When I got on the ice this morning, I did feel the little extra heel height in this blade. That feeling faded away after the first 15 minutes on the ice, but it's odd that I didn't notice it Monday.
Topic: Eclipse Dance blades (Read 7579 times)