by theorist » Sun Sep 28, 2014 9:12 am
I'll add HSS found no lateral adjustments were needed. That's not surprising, given the care that was put into selecting these boots. I'll share the story because everyone here has gone through the trials of bootfitting, typically several times, and thus may find this interesting:
I got them from my local shop, whose equipment manager is one of the most sophisticated bootfitters in the country. He arranged for me to try seven different brands of race boots, which is unusual -- most shops only have two to four. He had recently acquired a Tektronix pressure plate -- you stand on it while wearing both boots (with your orthotics), and it sends, to an attached computer, a false-color readout of the pressure distribution under the soles. On some boots we found the pressure was more to the outside, on others it was the opposite. On one model it was to the outside on one, and to the inside on the other. But with one boot, the Rossi Course KX, the lateral pressure distribution was uniform across both soles. This indicated that the geometry of these boot was a perfect match for my own geometry, and that no canting or cuff adjustments would be needed.
However, the Course KX they happened to have in my size was a women's boot, so the fit wasn't quite right. Not a problem, since the men's boot had the same geometry. But when he went to order it, even though this was November, Rossi was out of stock in my size. Fortunately, he had connections to Rossi's race dept., and managed to get a race stock version of the same boot. We checked it, and it gave the same pressure readout as the stock women's boot.
Having to get the race stock boot was fortuitous -- not only was it higher-performing than the stock boot, it was also more comfortable because it had a much better liner -- the thin flow race liner fit so well that I didn't need to get foam liners (which I'd had on previous boots). This ended up being not only the highest-performing boot I ever owned, but also the only comfortable one! And, correspondingly, it was the only warm ski boot I've ever owned, because it allowed unimpeded circulation. The shell fits so well that I don't buckle either of the two buckles over the foot. The only liner modification I needed was to add a Conformable foam tongue (the foam tongue took up some space in the upper cuff; plus, because it's much stiffer than the stock tongue, you don't feel a pressure point on your shin at the boot top). Now these liners are finally breaking down, so it's probably time for either new liners or new boots -- something I'm not looking forward to (finding comfortable race boots is always a challenge for me, because of my high instep).
The one limitation of this shop is that it's in the middle of a city, so they can't do on-snow evaluations (that's why they've adopted such a sophisticated approach, to do as well as they can without this option). I personally felt an on-snow eval would be a valuable final check, and I'd heard of HSS's reputation, which is why I had them take a look to confirm.