What shoes were Rory and Fauble wearing?

The Narwhal wrote:

Rory Linkletter's previous PR was: 1:01:44 at Houston in 2020.

Fauble's previous PR was: 1:02:18 at the 2020 Michigan Pro Half Marathon.

New PRs:

1:01:08 Linkletter

1:01:11 Fauble

There are the differences. Slightly more than a minute for one, slightly more than half that for the other.

centralparkrunner wrote:

I bought the carbon rocket 2s…and they were such a slow, awful shoe. The rincon is faster than the carbon rocket 2, faster being a relative term here. Vaporfly is so much better

Are you sure there was a version 2 of the Carbon Rocket? You actually have some?? By the way, the Rocket X is their flagship racer.

Oh, this is a bit awkward, as you wrote a really long post but made a basic mistake. See, you thought that that Kipchoge's and Bekele's 2:03 times were run in standard flats. But, as everyone who follows the sport knows, they were wearing the first iteration of the Vaporfly in 2016 when they ran those 2:03 times. They weren't available to buy, but Nike athletes had access to them - you might even have heard Rojo say that Kipchoge's 2016 Olympic gold deserves an asterisk because of this. Here's their PRs prior to the super-shoe era:

Kipchoge 2:04:00

Bekele 2:05:04

You can make a case that Kipchoge would have been a little faster as he had a shoe problem when running that 2:04, but as we see, Kipchoge improved by 2:21 in the super shoe era and Bekele by 3:23.

Radcliffe's record was freakish, no one else was even running within 90 seconds of it, even legends like Mary Keitany. Radcliffe herself never again got within 90 seconds of it. Compared to the non-Radcliffe best time, Kosgei ran 2:30 faster

Proof that Kipchoge ran London 2016 in Vaporfly's. Here is a picture of Shalane Flanagan and Amy Cragg wearing the white prototype at the US Olympic Trials

https://news.nike.com/news/nike-vaporfly-4-review

Here is a picture of Kipchoge running London 2016 in the same shoe

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/GK1JW0/eliud-kipchoge-elite-mens-winner-of-the-london-marathon-2016-running-GK1JW0.jpg

Bekele in Berlin 2016 in the Rio version of the Vaporfly

https://germanroadraces.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/news-featured-image-47589.jpg

High Hopes,

I got it and appreciate clearing up the 2:03s. I see when the shoe existed prior to public awareness of it. I guess it IS good to have Nike insiders on the Board!

Earlier, way up on this page, you said a 2 minute bump shoudn't be surprising. About halfway down the page you suggest a 1:30 improvement is to be expected.

Niether of them took either of those figures off their old PRs. Let's say for argument's sake that they will do so soon and that with any other brand they won't. Do you think theyll be twice that much faster in the full, which is to say 3-4 mInutes?

I'd say we have a good idea of what Fauble's potential is. His actual age and 'training age' (by which I mean how long he has been at a high level) are far enough along that he's probably run close to his theoretical best. Maybe not quite, but likely close. The perfect race - everything perfect - may not have come. If such a race would get him 2:09 flat, Nike alone - with no other variable changing - should get him somewhere between 2:05 and 2:06. Let's say 2:09 even is slightly optimistic. I suspect he's had that in him, but let's add on several seconds. And lets just say that your estimate is slightly high. The AR may not be on the table (but really is; just for this analysis let's say not) he's got to be under Rupp's PR right? Let's round up a few seconds and assume 2:06 flat is realistic.

Linkletter, on the other hand, is young enough age-wise and training-wise that I'm not convinced that what we've seen is what he will ultimately do. Even starting with 2:11 even - I'll assume he's capable of that on a record-elegible course - we're looking at 2:07-2:08. Let's not get too carried away and just say breaking 2:08. He's new enough to the marathon game that the perfect day has almost certainly come together and under 2:07 should be reasonable in the Swoosh.

Let's see if this all happens this year. Given EK and KB's time differentials, how could it not? If so, everything you have written about Nike on any thread could be accurate. If not, well, I guess nothing special is going on in Beaverton.

There have been multiple independent studies of the Nike shoes, on athletes of different abilities. Across the board, the average improvement in running economy was 4%, but the biggest finding has been that every single person who wore them, benefited to some extent. It's not even a debate now, the Nike shoes definitively reduce the energy it takes to run for everyone, not just Kipchoge. No one can say exactly what the shoes are worth in minutes/seconds, but the best estimate I've seen by Geoff Burns is that they are worth 1:30-2:00 over a marathon for an elite male.

I find it entirely plausible that someone could improve their PR by 1:30 over the HM just by swapping from crappy EVA based shoes to the Alphafly[/quote]

There was a thread on here about a study comparing all the super shoes from different companies. (The author was active on it too, and real helpful in answering questions about them).

Their data showed that the only shoes that gave a runner a real advantage were the Alphafly, Vaporfly and ASICS Metaspeed line. I was a little surprised the Saucony Endorphin line didn’t impress on that study, as it has a carbon plate and Pebax foam.

I wonder if ASICS will sign the two of them now. Rory is already working with Ryan Hall. I like them both… kinda rooting for this outcome.

I remember the study. If did not test the adidas super-shoe. I am wondering what happens when various other scientists hold tests. I wouldn't be surprised if the results could be slightly different. There must be a type of runner for whom the Saucony is close to perfect. When Ward was testing innumerable prototypes at BYU, they also had the Nike in the lab and could compare the results. Different running styles, stride lengths, vertical oscilation, even different body weights, are going to have slightly different shoes if every single runner was in a lab with an army of designers and scientists. That's why asics created one with a higher drop and one lower. Each worked better for someone in their testing pool.

All this is to say that I will trust a dozen different tests, in different labs, or at different universities, not all of which have an athletic department sponsorsed by Nike. Saucony actually made it into the second tier in that recent test as opposed to 'no benefit at all'. When the pool of runners has reached hundreds, with a wide variety of body types (for example tall, ie Tergat, vs short, ie Haile) and strides/styles, I will give more credence to the results. By the way, I am expecting the NB coming out this year to test impressively, but we'll see....

The actual time benefit of any shoe is too difficult to estimate with precision, which is why the best estimates provide only a range. The shoe itself is actually the most stable contributor to performance since it's the only thing not subject to external influences. Assuming Scott Fauble found a perfect marathon, under ideal weather conditions, he had a perfect build up, is physically ideal, and nails his nutrition on the day, I don't see why he couldn't run 2:07. And it wouldn't have to be in Nike shoes, as someone else said, The Asics Metaspeed gives the same benefit and observational data strongly suggests the Adidas Pro is on a par with Nike and Asics. Runners have options now, it's not just about Nike anymore

Ssorokoty wrote:

I think 100% of the PR efforts for Rory and Fauble should be credited to the shoes. Does anyone know what shoes they are wearing? I’m guessing not those trash cans of a shoe designed by Hoka.

Rory ran 61:30 at the same race in 2020. He ran about 30 seconds faster this year two years later. That's not absurd, especially for someone in their mid-20's who should still be improving. 100% of that PR is not from shoes, he hasn't been injured, he has been training that whole time. Really I think NAZ over-trains, he has been away from that for a little bit now, long enough to actually be fresh and so he finally felt strong in a race. And Fauble's old PR of a low 62 was I believe from the Michigan half marathon in October 2020, 7 weeks before he ran 2:09 at the marathon project. He hasn't really ever run a fast time trial style race on a fast course in good conditions. His last half before the one I mentioned in Michigan was way back in 2017, five years ago at Houston where he only ran 63:40, but if you have a brain you can find the weather that year was terribly warm and humid, when the winner was 61:14, the slowest year in a long time there, about a minute slower than normal. And he's a stronger runner rather than a sinny toothpick runner, so warm weather would effect him more. If the winners slowed by a minute from normal he would have slowed more than a minute from a better weather year. So his 63:40 performance in 2017 is more like a 62:30 or better five years ago. He should be a bit faster five years later, he is just now in his prime the past few years, not yet in his prime in 2017.

If they can improve 1:30 in a half marathon then they just ran pretty crappy, because they have run stuff faster than 62:30-62:40 half marathon equivalent in Hoka's in the past couple of years. Scott Fauble ran 62:18 at the Michigan Pro Half Marathon in 2020 wearing Hokas. That was a more challenging course than Houston, and similar weather day being upper 30's and windy.

So Scott literally ran 1:07 slower at Michigan 15 months ago in Hokas on a more challenging course than Houston. Frank Lara was in that same race and only beat Fauble by one second, he has since run 60:59 at Valencia. He beat Sydney Gidabuday in that Michigan race who just now beat Fauble at Houston over the weekend. It seems Houston is up to a minute faster than that Michigan course, meaning Scott ran a very similar performance in Michigan 15 months ago in Hokas as he did in Houston wearing Nikes. The shoes aren't making a difference of a minute in a half marathon, give me a break. Again, if they do then Scott and Rory ran terrible in Houston in their Nikes because they were beating people previously in Hokas and couldn't improve on them in their Nikes.