As followers of my Insta will know, I started to learn to ski just over a year ago. After my first few lessons, I took the plunge and invested not only in my own ski boots, but my own custom insoles, too.
You might think it’s extravagant. Even in the sales, my own mid-range ski boots cost around £350, and I invested another £60 or so on specialist sports insoles. I also paid for a professional ski boot fitter to heat mould both my boots and my insoles to my own feet and legs.
Here’s why it’s some of the best money I spent:
Do I need my own ski boots as a beginner?
I started lessons in early December at Chill Factore, in Manchester. I realised fairly quickly, that my rental boots were not helping my already wobbly confidence.
First, the boots being offered were WAY too big for my feet (rentals often don’t come in half sizes) and sometimes mid-way through a lesson, the soles of my feet would become incredibly painful.
We had a ski home exchange planned for Christmas and the whole point of learning to ski was so I could have a go at skiing in the real mountains. I was worried that I’d spent a fortune renting skis and booking flights and lessons, and I would have to skip the skiing after ten minutes because my feet hurt.
When you consider the overall cost of a ski holiday (even when you’re saving cash by using home exchange rather than paying for hotels or Airbnbs) then buying your own ski boots isn’t SO expensive. I knew that the cost of renting ski boots in the resort would be around £80. And those boots might fit, or they might not.
I felt that since we would likely go skiing a few times, the boots would pay for themselves over time. AND crucially, they would hopefully make my ski experiences more enjoyable and comfortable.
Go and see a ski boot fitter
I bought a pair of ski boots online and almost immediately realised that I’d bought the wrong size and what I really needed was a bootfitter.
A professional boot fitter will measure your feet and recommend a brand of boots that will work for YOUR experience and body type. They can also often adjust boots by stretching them, or knocking the shell about to allow for a weird toe shape or a narrow ankle. I went to a boot fitter and spent two hours trying on lots of boots until I found a pair that were the perfect size and shape.
I even got them steam-moulded so that the boot was shaped to my foot and calf. I was so excited to wear them. Except the next time I wore my boots on the snow, within 15 minutes, my feet were in agony again.
Don’t forget sports insoles
I worked out that the pain happened only when I was attached to a ski, so the actual *size* of the boot wasn’t the problem. It was more likely that the problem was the way the boot was supporting (or not supporting) my foot as I put pressure on it to control my speed and direction on the ski.
Getting your ski boots custom fitted is all well and good, but without the right sports insoles, you could find that your new ski boots hurt just as much as the dreaded rentals.
It turns out that my arch is relatively low, and my foot is slightly pronated, so that when I put on the boot, there’s a lot of space on the outer edge of my foot, until I push down on a ski, when my foot was pressing against the edge of the boot and causing pain. Similarly, my low arch wasn’t being supported, which was putting pressure on the ball of my foot, causing more pain. Basically, everything was causing a lot of pain.
What I needed was specialist sports insoles.
Currex offers a range of sports insoles that are perfect for ski activities. They’re available in three different heights for low, medium and high profile feet, and include additional cushioning, a firm middle where you need it, and insulation to help keep your feet warm on the mountain.
I ended up buying Superfeet insoles, which the staff at the Snow + Rock store in Chill Factore custom fit to my feet. Basically they will stand you on a pedestal, put your feet into a special gel that warms up and makes a cast of your feet. They can then mould the insoles to your specific foot shape.
And hey presto! Here’s me and my new ski boots and insoles. See how happy I am?
Do custom insoles work?
I’ll be honest and say that my feet do STILL hurt sometimes after I’ve been skiing for a while, but I’m working on foot-strengthening exercises to address what I suspect is a case of plantar fascitis.
In the meantime, my boots are 100% more comfortable than they were and I’d recommend trying them if you’re going to invest in your own boots. We’re off skiing again this winter, and this year I’m feeling so much more confident in my comfort, if not in my ski technique. But hey, there’s nothing wrong in doing a couple of blue runs and then stopping for an Aperol Spritz, right?
