6 ms·

The aggressive opinion on regulating these shoes seems over the top to me, the next best shoes, the relatively unheralded Nike Streak, provided a 3% performance

• jartelt 8y ago
  Being 3 or 4% more efficient on race day is a HUGE advantage. Maybe not every elite runner wants to have to wear these shoes to compete?
  • microcolonel 8y ago
    Then they will have to find shoes which are competitive, doesn't seem that crazy to me. It'd be great if footraces continued to advance consumer shoes like stock car racing advances consumer vehicles.
    • lagadu 8y ago
      Not a very good example, stock cars are effectively ancient in many ways compared to modern cars. For example they only started playing with (indirect) fuel injection a few years ago.
      • chrisseaton 8y ago
        Aren't stock cars literally by definition modern cars? They're cars currently available in the stock of consumer retailers. That's the whole point of the game isn't it?
        • lacksconfidence 8y ago
          some time ago stock car racing was just that, but these days the types of cars manufacturers run in stock car racing are purpose built race machines that have only a passing superficial relationship to what you can find at a dealer.
        • civilitty 8y ago
          Stock car racing's history traces to Prohibition era moonshiners. They had to upgrade their cars to get away from authorities but had to do so without raising suspicion. NASCAR races can be in excess of 200 miles per hour when race track conditions allow it which only extremely high end sportscars can do (NASCAR engines are up to 900 horsepower). By definition, they are cars that look like they're consumer cars but inside they're made to be powerful racing vehicles.
  • hinkley 8y ago
    In cycling people are risking lifetime bans to get a 5 or 8% power advantage. Which is doubly amazing because speed goes up with the square root of power due to drag. I’d wager that 3% for a runner is a bigger deal than 6% for a cyclist.
    • tylerhou 8y ago
      Drag doesn't matter as much at higher levels of cycling, because teams will draft off one another to save energy.
      • adrianN 8y ago
        Shaved legs provide a small advantage in the Tour de France.
      • twic 8y ago
        Not in the breakaways, which is where races are won.
        • AtlasBarfed 8y ago
          or time trials or climbing
• bo1024 8y ago
  If it were just "the shoes make you faster" there would be nothing to discuss. The debate centers around a qualitative difference: "The shoes have a 'spring' in them that make you faster." It's similar to a mini version of prosthetics such as Pistorius's that were banned from Olympic competition, as they are basically big metal springs on the end of your legs. The Vaporfly was explicitly designed to use this spring principle, i.e. store mechanical energy in a carbon fiber plate and release it back on toe-off. So some, like me, feel that shoes for competition should not be allowed to mechanically assist the runner. It's not about percentages, it's a simple binary criterion.
  • nradov 8y ago
    Even regular foam soles have at least a little bit of springiness.
    • themodelplumber 8y ago
      I was just discussing this with a runner who uses Hokas. She said she thinks she gets a similar slingshot-like effect with them, maybe not as drastic but it's there.
  • GatorD42 8y ago
    If you think the plate is such a qualitative difference you may have fallen for Nike's marketing. The vapor fly 4% is very lightweight with an excellent cushioning to weight ratio thanks partly to Nike's new zoomx foam (which possibly provides superior energy return too). Shoes with plates in them have been around for a while and nobody complained - Mizuno shoes have plates like this as does the Nike zoom fly (different shoe), neither shoe is very high on the list or higher than you would expect based on its weight alone. Look at the top shoes on the list - the Nike streak is a super lightweight shoe without Nike's new foam and it is second fastest. This should tell you weight alone is probably the most important factor. Two other highly rated shoes are Adidas shoes with boost foam, a type of foam similar to Nike's zoomx with a better cushioning to weight ratio. So the newest generation of foam probably provides a small benefit apart from the she's weight alone. Runners capable of running a three hour marathon probably know the single most important factor in a running shoe for speed is weight. If they still choose to run in Saucony Guide or Hokas there's probably a good reason. What percent of runners who switched to the Saucony Guide were injured and used the shoes to recover, and what percent of runners in heavier shoes with more cushioning and stability features made it to the Starting line vs runners in Nike streaks? It's possible the heavier shoes provide protection from injury or greater comfort - there's a reason runners don't race marathons in track spikes. I don't think the plate provides much benefit apart from weight and cushioning, my guess is that it is there for the feel of the shoe and without it the new foam would feel too mushy.