I’ve been skating for a while on inline hockey skates with 80mm wheels. These are normal-sized wheels popular since decades ago. I actually have a hi-low setup with 76mm and 80mm wheels. But for the purpose of this article, treat them as so-called “4×80” setup – meaning that the frame of each skate houses 4 wheels of 80mm diameter.

These skates are great for urban skating on paved streets, skating on bike trails, skating at an outdoor rink, slalom skating around cones, and doing two-foot wizard skating moves.

But they are no good for marathon skating like folks do at Wednesday Night Skate NYC. I got leg cramps most of the times, and I’ve never been able to finish an entire night skate. Lack of stamina obviously played a role. But I did note that a large part of the crowd sported big wheels. Some had skate boots on four 110mm wheels, and some had three 125mm wheels.

After some research, I decided to get myself a pair of skates with a 3×110 setup. It seemed like three 110mm wheels allowed for sustained high speed skating with less labor. And at the same time, it still gave me the ability to maneuver in an urban setting. With practice, presumably I would be able to resume wizard skating on this setup as well.

I already had a pair of TRUE hockey skates. They were custom-molded with a monocoque carbon shell, built to 3D models of my feet that my local Pure Hockey store scanned. What I wanted was to put an Endless frame with three 110mm wheels, on these TRUE hockey boots. I just wanted to mount a different frame and different wheels on them, as shown below, in an imaginary image I stitched together for your viewing pleasure.

This would have been glorious. Just look at the comparison between the run-of-the-mill TRUE hockey skates on the left, and the 3×110 fantasy version on the right.

This fantasy setup was not meant to be. It turned out that nobody makes carbon-fiber hockey skates that take big wheels.

I had to settle with non-hockey boots instead. I did mount an Endless 90 frame on this alternative, with three 110mm wheels, as shown below.

By “carbon shell hockey skates”, I mean a one-piece shell that covers far more than just the sole and parts of the ankle. Look at the TRUE monocoque “hockey” shell shown below, compared to most so-called carbon shells of “inline” skates on the right.

You simply can’t buy skates with big wheels on full-bodied “hockey” shells. They don’t exist. I am still puzzled by this unexpected void in the universe of all possible skate setups.

So I had to compromise and make modifications to commercially-available skates, in order to mount big wheels on them. This includes removing ankle buckles from Powerslide Tau skates, lacing with runner’s loops, heat-molding the skates, spot heating ankle areas, customizing insoles, and adding a side protector to the inner side of boots.

I’ve taken plenty of pictures as I adopted my new Tau skates to my needs. As I broke in these skates, the inner shell edge of the right skate chafed skin below my ankle bone, despite generous amount of heat-moldable liner. I think this is a design flaw not just in Tau, but in all urban-style carbon skates derived from the same pivoted-cuff design, as exemplified by Scott Olson’s patent from 1998. Many people have reported similar issues. Powerslide attempted to address this issue in 2023 for Tau, but it didn’t appear to have worked for me.

I believe this shell bite issue was exacerbated by my bunion on my right foot. In addition, my feet are much wider than average. It seems that the bunion caused my right foot to sit crooked inside the skate. As a result, I had to aggressively adjust both position and orientation of the right frame, to get proper balance for single-skate gliding. I also tried all sorts of compression socks and hydrocolloid bandages as short-term aids during breaking-in.

But I love the Powerslide Tau so much. Together with Endless frames and Undercover wheels, these skates gave me total transfer of power from a striding leg to the gliding leg. The efforts I spent adopting these skates were completely justified.

More articles will shortly be written on each of these adoption topics. And I’ll continue to expand this article as a guide to all of these topics.

• What are carbon-fiber inline skates ?
• Reign Ares as big-wheel skates for urban marathons

Updated 2024-10-21: just days after I wrote this, I realized belatedly that Powerslide does make hockey skates with Trinity mounts. There are only a few of them, and I’ve never seen anyone talk about them. Perhaps that is the answer to my quest. But first I need to make sure they actually have a true one-piece carbon shell complete with ankle and leg support like TRUE hockey skates do. Check out Powerslide Reign Ares 100.

Update 2024-10-30: I have received my Powerslide Reign Ares 100. This is definitely not made like a traditional hockey skate. I have yet no idea how extensive the carbon shell is, but the quarter panel feels solidly one-piece by touch, except the eyelet tabs do appear to be glued onto the shell, and not parts of the shell. The leather toe cap is folded over the shell, in the same way urban skates are made. See detailed descriptions of hockey skate and urban skate manufacturing processes at: What are carbon-fiber inline skates ?

Update 2024-11-16: The Reign Ares are no carbon hockey skates. They are urban carbon skates with integrated hockey quarter panels. They just look like hockey skates. They actually work more like urban skates. But I love them. I think they are the best answer to my quest to find big wheels on carbon (almost) hockey skates. I documented my journey to customize and set up Ares. I turned them into the right big-wheel skates for me, for urban marathons. See: Reign Ares as big-wheel skates for urban marathons.

Update 2025-01-29: Ever since the 2024-11-16 update, I’ve been rewriting the Wikipedia article on Inline Skates. While on this big-wheel journey, I looked for resources online, and found little. There used to be great many personal websites and blogs on inline skating before, but most such domains have not only gone silent, but have been physically wiped out, except for fortunate snippets captured by the great Internet Archive. I also found Wikipedia lacking in this and related topics. So I took an interests in adding a “types of inline skates” section to the article. Little did I know that I would end up rewriting the article completely. More than two months after, I am only half done in this rewrite. I am sharing pictures taken and illustrations made for this series on Wikimedia, to illustrate the article. Update 2025-05-25. I have spent the first half of year 2025 rewriting the entire Inline Skates article. I am getting close to the finish line.