New wheels! New wheels!

A few weeks ago, Boudica and I put in an order for some new wheels. I think this is my first attempt at a product review, so we’ll see how that goes. I got some new indoor wheels for my Diablos; I had been skating on the stock Radar Evos that came with them and those things are hard as fuck. I guess they’re a good starter wheel because they’re hard and will get you rolling, but I found myself skidding out of control a bunch of times trying to corner. I mean, I couldn’t really go as fast as I really wanted because I’d be worried that I would just slide out of bounds (and/or fall on my ass). We’re skating on a pretty dusty gym floor, so there’s really not much for the Evos to grip onto.

Anyway, the talk of the town for a while now has been Atom Poisons. They’re hybrids so they’re quite grippy for indoor wheels, but squishy enough to roll over random derbris outside. Most of the ladies in our league got them as their first upgrade. Not being one that likes to go with what’s tried and tested, I had been looking on the Atom site and happily for me a whole new bunch of wheels were coming out at the time I was looking for them; for some reason I really go stuck on the Super-Gs. They’re harder than the Poisons (which might be good because I’m lighter than most people in the league, so I don’t have as much push in my legs), but not crazy hard like the Evos. Plus they’re marketed as one of the lightest wheels out there; what with some fancy core or something. They come in two hardnesses: 91A (red core) and 88A (blue core). For reference, my Evos are a 95A and my outdoor Kryptos are a 78A. 

I’ve got the 88A Blue Core ones. I’ve just put them on my skates (with new Bones bearings too! Whoo!!) and had a little bit of a roll around in my kitchen (which is probably the biggest non-carpeted part of my house). One thing I noticed immediately is that they are smaller than my Evos and my Kryptos, being 58mm diameter, while my other wheels are 62mm. This means that I’m actually closer to the ground (by 4mm really, but the thing is that it actually feels noticeable). And they are pretty fucking light. Picking up my feet is way easier than it was in my old wheels. I really hope this helps with my shin splints.

I often wear skates around the privacy of my own home.

A couple of things though: I rolled around in the kitchen for maybe 15 minutes, and already some of the paint is coming off the wheels. Basically I don’t care THAT much about it, but that’s a bit annoying considering they’re brand new wheels. Also, the bearings stick out a bit of the wheels, on the outside. Like, maybe because the core is smaller or whatever, the inside bearing (that is flush with the back of the wheel) is flat, but the outside one pokes out a teeny bit. Because they were new bearings, I thought at first I was just doing a crap job pushing them in, and so I was using my skate tool to help but they wouldn’t budge. Even after I did up the nuts they still poked out a bit. It doesn’t really seem to be a problem for the wheels, but I did find that a bit unexpected.

UPDATE: I did a bigger skate yesterday on them at training and wow, you can really feel the difference. They're might grippier for cornering, so I'm more confident that I won't just go sliding out of control, and because they're lighter I felt like I could pick up my feet more (and I didn't get shin splints). In fact, I think at some points I could actually sprint properly on my wheels, like I was running. Transitions were smoother with them as well I think. So yeah. I'm liking these new wheels so far, and I'm glad I went for the grippier ones instead of the 91s. So hopefully they'll get my through my yellow star test next week! Eep!!