Anybody still with me?
Ok, great. So I bought these boots on Ebay to replace a pair of lange X9's that I had received from my uncle about 6 years ago, after he had skiied them quite a few years himself. I had previously been skiing on lange XR7s, and loved the way the X9 felt; the thinner, tighter fit, the stiffer flex, that whole feeling. So I says to myself, why should I pay exorbitant retail prices, I know my foot size, I know lange boots fit my foot, and I know I like a stiff race boot, I can buy boots on ebay for the cheap!
Sooooo I go on ebay, and I buy the stiffest lange boot I can find, which incidentally is the 130LF. I buy what I think is my size (9.5, 317mm), which turns out to be not exactly my size (the X9s were 323mm, oops) and the boot is horribly, horribly painful. But I says to myself, I says well I've been buckling those x9's up as tight as they can go these last few years, and I tend to wear boots into the ground, so maybe it was fate that I got the smaller size. Maybe I just need to see one of them bootfitters I'm always hearing about.
So I head up to Paul Richelson's Feet First in plymouth, and paul takes a look at my feet, and my boots, and tells me that yes, the 130LF can be made to fit my foot but that I'm going to be in agony until some work is done. Seems that I have a narrow heel which is the reason I've always liked the langes, but the problem with the 317mm is that my big toe and the opposing arch tends to, ahh, rub against the shell a bit, and that's causing me no end to discomfort. It's jamming my toes into a little ball of pain. But my heel is happy, which is nice, there's just the tiny bit of lift on the X9s in 323mm.
Geez I'm really writing a novel here, I know I had a point...oh oh, I remember now. Ok, so Paul says that the 9.5 is the right size in the 130lf for me, though he cautioned me that this is a race stiff boot with paper thin liners and was I a ski racer or something? No, no I am not. I ski hard and fast on the east coast ice rinks (currently sitting on a pair of atomic GS:11's which I enjoy very much) but I am definitely not a racer, just a recreational skiier. Ok, well so I like my boots stiff and with a thin liner to increase control, and I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of comfort for that. But my question to you all is, how much comfort are we talking here? I was under the impression that my old X9's were a race-class boot, but it seems that this 130LF is a REALLY race class boot, and perhaps I'm just a bit outclassed here? I have the option to either stick with the boot and
let Paul go about grinding out the toe and arch (I tried skiing two runs in the boots as-is against his recommendation and I was in such agony I could literally not even turn my skis) or return the boots and try again. One other option is the person I got my boots from also has a lange L10 in a size 10 that he'd exchange my boots for, now I know that the 130lf is a newer, more expensive boot, but would I be better off ignoring the $$$ signs and going with that boot, would my non-racer ass be better off in the end? I'm 6'1, 175lbs or so if it matters, like I said I really *like* a stiff boot but when I was in Feet First I was sitting next to a kid about my height and weight who raced GS competitively, and he was wearing the 120LF...hmm, did I do wrong?
Sorry for the lenghty rant, any advice is appreciated.
- Darrell