(no subject)

[aella_irene]

So, I am having some problems with shoes: I bought a pair at Christmas, and since then my climbing has become rather worse: despite the fact that I bought the same model as I had been renting, in the same size, I end up with swiftly cramping feet, occasional agonising pain, and an inability to balance on anything smaller than a mouse.

I am at my wit's end: when I went to my local climbing shop, they generally concluded that I have weird feet, and suggested a) new shoes and b) a course on footwork. The new shoes would be financially impractical, and the course in footwork seems unlikely to help, as I can no longer do footwork that I could do before. Climbing has stopped being fun, and started being painful.

Does anyone have any advice? Recs of possible solutions?

Comments

[rydra_wong]

The shoes aren't 5.10 by any chance, are they? They're notorious for variations in sizing, even between shoes of the same model that are supposedly of the same size. But it can happen with a bunch of brands.

As I understand it, climbing shoe manufacture is often done partly by hand, so small variations are common.

Shoes can take time to break in, but any breaking-in would have happened by now. Basically, it sounds like these are really really bad shoes for you, and AFAIK there's not a way around that.

But you should be able to re-sell them fairly easy, especially if there's minimal wear -- there's a fairly big market in "rock shoes that haven't been used a lot because they were disastrous". *g*

If your gym has a noticeboard, you could try putting a note there, or using an online climbing forum. That would let you recoup part of the cost, which might make new shoes viable.

[aella_irene]

Evol Royales.

Thank you! I'm going to start renting again, and I'll ask when I next go up.

[emperor]

This is all good advice; once you feel up to trying to acquire another pair, do spend lots of time trying them on in the shop.