Day One:
Brief history - I have always had very flat feet but no pain and no pronation
problems with walking. I have always had the tendency of rocking over easily
to the inside edge of my skate when I don't want to, so have to really force
outside edges. I managed to do OK for many years skating freestyle and figures,
but in ice dancing always struggled and just thought it was caused by other
factors (laziness, bad hips, weak muscles, tuning out my coach).
Fast forward, two hip re-creations later, I'm still re-learning how to skate. I moved my blade over and considered shimming it several months ago, which helped slightly. But I still didn't feel secure and stable on outside edges. It occurred to me that perhaps I'm pronating in my skate even though I don't do so in shoes. On a whim I just thought I'd try orthotics in my skates even though I don't pronate.
And, Voila, today I held real outside edges with no struggle. They felt right.
They sounded right (without that scrapey, "it's about to change to an inside
edge so I have to force it" sound). Some of the things I had to muscle through
in the past just to stay vertical seemed suddenly easier. It made a HUGE
difference.
I didn't have time to try very much and the new orientation of my foot meant a
blister formed so I'll have to fix that, but ... but ... but ... well, this is
all very exciting. Wish someone had told me (or I had figured out) to do this
years and years ago. What a difference it would have made! I had heard about
orthotics but since I didn't pronate off the ice it never occurred to me I might
need to fix what was happening to my feet inside my skates.
Happy birthday to me!
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