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I don’t mind what anyone wears as long as you can buy a pair for $49 and run 1000 miles in them. What’s not cool is it being acceptable to use $250 to buy ones

I don’t mind what anyone wears as long as you can buy a pair for $49 and run 1000 miles in them. What’s not cool is it being acceptable to use $250 to buy ones way into success, and it’s even less cool teaching the kids that money is required for attaining goals. Goodness knows they are under enough pressure on that front as it is. Perhaps a World Rally Championship style homologation, but where shoe manufacturers have to show they’ve sold X thousand pairs at Y multiples of the local Big Mac price, as proof of availability to general public at a price that doesn’t promote consumerist elitism. But where’s the profit in that?

cbhl 7y ago
The obvious workaround to that regulation would be to make tweaks but try to call it the same shoe for certification reasons. Like, say, the Boeing 737.
keanzu 7y ago
> World Rally Championship style Such an odd example to choose. World Rally Cars are built on production 1.6-litre four-cylinder cars, but feature turbochargers, anti-lag systems, four-wheel-drive, sequential gearboxes, aerodynamic parts and other enhancements bringing the price of a WRC car to around US$1 million. Only $250 to have the exact same shoes as Eliud Kipchoge, wow!
- gorgoiler 7y ago
  When I was a teenager the “555” Impreza WRC seemed reasonably priced for consumers to buy. But the point was about homologation — competing with products that are general available to amateurs — ensuring accessibility to the sport. Rally driving is indeed pretty niche, so the entry fee for wannabe drivers being the cost of a reasonably specialist mass produced car seems fair. For running: the audience is wider and the cost should be lower. Race organizers that put a price cap on equipment help to hold back the tide of performance being affected by gear instead of grit.
ThinkBeat 7y ago
As a now-former long-distance runner, you can buy any damn shoe you want and it wont make you run 40K. Hard work, dedication, sweat, pain, and perhaps a little genetic blessing can get you there over time. There is no magic here. but yes the right shoe, apparently, might give you an advantage but then you must already be running at a very high level.

cbhl 7y ago

The obvious workaround to that regulation would be to make tweaks but try to call it the same shoe for certification reasons. Like, say, the Boeing 737.

keanzu 7y ago

> World Rally Championship style Such an odd example to choose. World Rally Cars are built on production 1.6-litre four-cylinder cars, but feature turbochargers, anti-lag systems, four-wheel-drive, sequential gearboxes, aerodynamic parts and other enhancements bringing the price of a WRC car to around US$1 million. Only $250 to have the exact same shoes as Eliud Kipchoge, wow!

gorgoiler 7y ago
When I was a teenager the “555” Impreza WRC seemed reasonably priced for consumers to buy. But the point was about homologation — competing with products that are general available to amateurs — ensuring accessibility to the sport. Rally driving is indeed pretty niche, so the entry fee for wannabe drivers being the cost of a reasonably specialist mass produced car seems fair. For running: the audience is wider and the cost should be lower. Race organizers that put a price cap on equipment help to hold back the tide of performance being affected by gear instead of grit.

ThinkBeat 7y ago

As a now-former long-distance runner, you can buy any damn shoe you want and it wont make you run 40K. Hard work, dedication, sweat, pain, and perhaps a little genetic blessing can get you there over time. There is no magic here. but yes the right shoe, apparently, might give you an advantage but then you must already be running at a very high level.