I better report back, it's been about 24 hours since the shave (I've managed to get a cold in the mean time and thus spent a fair bit of time being lazy).

It went a little better, for one I didn't clean up with a cartridge razor.

So I took a hot shower after I did 15 mins of hair conditioner on the whiskers. I did forgo the steamed towels which may have been helpful in hind sight. I think it's also important to mention that this whole processes took over an hour (talk about efficiency). Things I noticed, whisker length before shaving was around 2mm I managed to get that down to 1mm at worst in some places. I did the beard reduction with the blade flat against my face and that actually took a LOT off. At this point I thought things were going well so I did another beard reduction pass and all was well. Things started to go a little wrong after the WTG pass, I figured since I didn't feel any discomfort I'd do another WTG pass to see if I can actually get a close shave. I suspect I may have gotten a little impatient and applied too much pressure as I started to feel the burn (I'm pretty sure this is bad). I also attempted to do a XTG pass in some areas and that was quite a bit more uncomfortable.

I did manage to get the sides of my face pretty clean and fairly close (no BBS though) which was great actually, I think this was a better result than what I would have gotten with the cartridge razor. My skin was quite sensitive for a couple of hours after but I think since I didn't clean up with the cartridge razor I got off a lot better than I did in the past.

I think I have trouble stretching the skin properly, which will probably make a lot of difference. I'll keep working on that and see how I go in a weeks time.