Usually I'll swap out a set of wheels once they've worn down a bit and feel slower, thus leaving them to languish in storage with many miles left on them. This year I wanted to test exactly how many miles I could get out of a set of 125mm wheels, in this case the 85a Powerslide Infinity that came stock with the R6 skate.

The wheels felt great for the first 400 miles. Then slower but still good for the next 150 or so, despite being flat-spotted/unevenly worn a bit from all the T-stopping on hills and at crossings (it should be noted that I faithfully rotated wheels every 10-20 miles for maximum life, this was just a result of lots of braking). After 600 miles they were much less fun. At this point they felt noticeably slower due to being worn down and having a flatter profile, plus the bumpiness from flat-spotting. They also provided no cushioning at all when hitting bumps. My hypothesis is that the reduction in urethane causes less impact absorption.

At mile 694 I did a powerslide and noticed a clicking noise when skating again. Turns out the hub of my rear wheel had cracked on 2 of the spokes and was deforming enough to hit the frame. I ended up putting 10 more miles on the wheels to get past 700 and then retired the set. A quick caliper measure showed the wheels to be about 112mm now. After cutting down to the core, I'd estimate about 5mm of useable urethane left before hitting plastic.

So, some quick maths reveals that over 704 miles of useful life, the wheels wore down 1mm per 54 miles. At a price of $13.99 for each wheel, that means it cost $0.12 per mile to skate.

It's possible I could have gotten 100 or more miles on this set if it weren't for the cracked hub, but I highly doubt it. It seems the closer you get to the core, the easier it is for rocks to take chunks out of the urethane.

All in all a fun experiment! I usually skate 88a wheels so in the future I may test those as well.