Hi Erik,

To answer a few of your questions,

Yes! The Medalist Pic-Skate is more than adequate to perform any of the moves
you see in Joanns book. Being one of the inventors of the Pic-Skate, I speak
from enthusiastic experience!
Your situation with slow bearings is a little more complicated. It is my
personal view that bearings over ABEC 3 make very little difference in the
speed of your day to day skating. Other factors such as wheel type, shape and
hardness seem to affect the speed more apparently.

Some speed skaters using five wheel speed skates put special speed lube oils
on their bearings every time they skate! This is a time consuming procedure,
but it does afford them a few tenths of a second faster times!!
This as you probably know, is very important to a speed racer...but, not
particularly important to an artistic skater. I would recommend going with a
good ABEC 3 or ABEC 5 bearing, and replacing them when you start to hear them
"grinding" as they spin. Hope this helps, and good luck with your inline
skating.

-Nick Perna
Inventor of the Pic-Skate




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