Saucony's Jared Ward publishes scientific paper showing that Nike's 4% shoes really do work

messi wrote:

IAAF had no issue banning the Spira Spring shoe manufactured by that mega conglomerate Spira.

Those were actual springs, however. Sure, there are various types of springs.. coil springs, leaf springs, etc. But, there are plenty of shoes out there with plastic plates in the midsole that increase the rigidity and change the characteristics of performance. Because the Vaporfly has a carbon fiber plate, it should be banned?

Truth Only wrote:

Reality is more important. It all sounds like junk.

Twice in the study, Jared Ward said the mental aspect is most important. He basically summed up all the research by saying , paraphrased here, "which ever shoe makes me feel the best, I will perform the best in". Which I agree with 100%.

That is the sketchers shoe the poster referenced. Just because you can't purchase the shoe as a consumer doesn't mean it's not a competing shoe, after all Ward has been using whatever prototype he has for almost two years now and although saucony reps have told me it's coming out later this year I have no idea if it will actually happen. Same for Brooks as they've had athletes using a prototype since at least Boston 2018 if not sooner. New Balance apparently has something in the works but if they're as slow as these other brands and Emily Sisson wasn't using them in her debut that puts the product two years from being released.

UA Runner wrote:

Truth Only wrote:

Reality is more important. It all sounds like junk.

Twice in the study, Jared Ward said the mental aspect is most important. He basically summed up all the research by saying , paraphrased here, "which ever shoe makes me feel the best, I will perform the best in". Which I agree with 100%.

So he runs in Saucony's version of the 4% which is still a work in progress and runs a 2 minute PR after many career marathons. You think that was only mental? I think not.

Like that time Michael Phelps said I don't need the sharkskin suit and wore a regular speedo and swam just as fast and crushed all the best swimmers in the world because he believed the speedo was just as good for him. Except that never happened because science matters and Phelps like every other swimmer got significantly slower once the special suits were outlawed. The mental aspect of running like any other sport is huge but Ward has been solid there for years, he didn't suddenly have a mental breakthrough that took minutes of his PR. Mental only conquers physical so much and the new generation of running shoes clearly make a difference.

UA Runner wrote:

messi wrote:

IAAF had no issue banning the Spira Spring shoe manufactured by that mega conglomerate Spira.

Those were actual springs, however. Sure, there are various types of springs.. coil springs, leaf springs, etc. But, there are plenty of shoes out there with plastic plates in the midsole that increase the rigidity and change the characteristics of performance. Because the Vaporfly has a carbon fiber plate, it should be banned?

The "actual springs" in Spiras were useless and just a marketing gimmick. Someone here said they extracted them from a Spira shoe and they were so soft that would be flattened with a can of soda (or something like that). There's no reason to believe coil springs would work any better than any other type of spring in a running shoe midsole.

But compare the conditions of Boston to Rio and the Los Angeles trials. It wasn't just the shoes.

rojo wrote:

However, the 4% shoes need a new name. 2.7%.

A common misconception - The initial claim was that for an athlete like Kipchoge (not as much Tadese or Dasisa), it would boost his running economy by 4%, not for every Joe 2:10 Marathoner out there.

rojo wrote:

The bad news is it appears that Ward's 2:09 from Boston should be struck from the record books. Now we all know that won't happen but I'm not sure why no one at the IAAF is enforcing their new rule about pros only being allowed to run in shoes that are commercially available. Laura Muir's UK indoor mile record hasn't been stricken from the books either.

For what it's worth, what about Desi's win with the Brooks prototypes, or all of the Nike athletes wearing prototype 4% during (and leading up to, including the Olympic Trials) Rio?

Who’s Jarod Word?

SteelTownRunner wrote:

rojo wrote:

However, the 4% shoes need a new name. 2.7%.

A common misconception - The initial claim was that for an athlete like Kipchoge (not as much Tadese or Dasisa), it would boost his running economy by 4%, not for every Joe 2:10 Marathoner out there.

Spring-mass systems must be tuned. It is very possible for a set of shoes to have quite a different increase in efficiency for one runner versus the next. Presumably, they tuned the shoes (adjusting stiffness, deflection) to match kipchoge in kipchoges's shoe size. No idea if they kept the same aspects for larger or smaller sizes, or if they adjusted them proportionately to an estimated average weight for runners who wear those shoe sizes.

I completely disagree with you. The arms race is great. By today I'd say all shoes are equal again or at least that's what I believe. I think the vaporfly/next% advantage is only in the half+ distances now and well I haven't tried other shoes like the carbon rocket so I can't say.

But I have worn other shoes for shorter distances and I've set a new PB in the 5k even without a CF plate. Things are spicy and companies are spending money. It's not just hey let's get a new colorway for 3 years, then change one thing that ruins the shoe for 6.

What's great about not being professional is that I can choose and try whatever I want. I've never been more excited.

Oh and Pebax foam has been available for a long time for example. So has the CF plate. Pebax is in most of Muzino's shoes for instance but clearly not the same feeling.

DC Wonk wrote:

This morning I ordered a pair of the new Zoom Fly 3 that became available at about 10am. Will see if they're worth $160. I have no need for the Next%. Glad to see Nike lowered the drop to 8mm.

The Zoom Flys are terrible shoes, clogs that will break you.

Yawn. 2.7 % better efficiency, whatever that means. If it was really a 2.7 % increase in speed/decrease in time, that would mean about a 3:20 min gain for a 2:03/2:04 marathon runner. Where are all the 1:59-2:00 runners now?

I think it might be more like a 1-2 min improvement at best, if you look at actual performances. However, good enough for Kipchoge to better the WR he was chasing for years, but it won't make a 2:20 runner elite, nor does it really matter if your average hobby jogger runs 4:12 instead of 4:15.

UA Runner wrote:

messi wrote:

IAAF had no issue banning the Spira Spring shoe manufactured by that mega conglomerate Spira.

Those were actual springs, however. Sure, there are various types of springs.. coil springs, leaf springs, etc. But, there are plenty of shoes out there with plastic plates in the midsole that increase the rigidity and change the characteristics of performance. Because the Vaporfly has a carbon fiber plate, it should be banned?

The Vaporfly should be banned on wet days, the heels flick water in the face of those behind.

Partridge wrote:

Yawn. 2.7 % better efficiency, whatever that means. If it was really a 2.7 % increase in speed/decrease in time, that would mean about a 3:20 min gain for a 2:03/2:04 marathon runner. Where are all the 1:59-2:00 runners now?

I think it might be more like a 1-2 min improvement at best, if you look at actual performances. However, good enough for Kipchoge to better the WR he was chasing for years, but it won't make a 2:20 runner elite, nor does it really matter if your average hobby jogger runs 4:12 instead of 4:15.

Prior to the 2016 London Marathon, Kipchoge was a 2:04 man.

Subway Surfers wrote:

Partridge wrote:

Yawn. 2.7 % better efficiency, whatever that means. If it was really a 2.7 % increase in speed/decrease in time, that would mean about a 3:20 min gain for a 2:03/2:04 marathon runner. Where are all the 1:59-2:00 runners now?

I think it might be more like a 1-2 min improvement at best, if you look at actual performances. However, good enough for Kipchoge to better the WR he was chasing for years, but it won't make a 2:20 runner elite, nor does it really matter if your average hobby jogger runs 4:12 instead of 4:15.

Prior to the 2016 London Marathon, Kipchoge was a 2:04 man.

Exactly. And in the 2016 London Marathon he ran a 2:03:05 without vapor fly 4% shoes. His current world record is 2:01:39, so that's a 1:26 improvement and just in that 1-2 min range I suggested.

If you take into account that Berlin might be faster than London, then you have to compare his 2016 performance with his 2:02:37 in London this year, so just a mere 28 second improvement....

And again, where are all the other 2:00 runners now, and several 2:14-2:16 female performances would have been expected, too.

Now I had a quick glance at the marathon IAAF top lists from 2013-2018 and the result was very much annoying. I looked at 1st, 5th, 10th, 50th and 100th performance. And apart from Kipchoge you can just say that 2018 was slightly above average, but not any different from other good years like 2014 and just about 20-30 seconds above average.

I know that not all athletes wear vapor flys, but many do and the statistics don't confirm the hype.

There is a reason why BAA Q-times all went back to original times. More people wearing these shoes and dropping awesome times.

Not only do they work, you can pound a long run or race in them and come back the next day with less fatigue

rojo wrote:

The bad news is it appears that Ward's 2:09 from Boston should be struck from the record books. Now we all know that won't happen but I'm not sure why no one at the IAAF is enforcing their new rule about pros only being allowed to run in shoes that are commercially available. Laura Muir's UK indoor mile record hasn't been stricken from the books either.

"Rule 143: Clothing, shoes and athlete bibs

- Any type of shoe used must be reasonably available to all in the spirit of the universality of athletics. Shoes must not be constructed so as to give athletes any unfair assistance or advantage."

Rojo, I've posted this before.

The "type" of shoe must be reasonably available to all. Not necessarily the exact shoe. "Type" of shoe is very open to interpretation. But context matters. Prototypes and custom shoes have been the norm in elite running for literally the entire history of running. At one point you couldn't get track shoes that were NOT custom. Bannister ran his 4-minute mile in a pair of ultralight spikes he had specially made by a London cobbler. Everyone knows about Bowerman's waffle iron. And every major marathon has always had elites testing out the versions of yet-to-be-released racing flats. It is implausible that the IAAF intended to totally revolutionize long-accepted shoe practices with a vaguely worded rule and no interpretive guidance.

If the IAAF intended the rule to mean that you must wear a model of shoes available to the public through general retail channels, that would have been a very easy rule to write. What the IAAF did was give itself some leeway to issue subsequent guidance as it learns more and as new products are developed.

Now, if the IAAF wanted to ban the Vaporfly, it could certainly do so, but it would have to come up with criteria for legality other than just the model name. It could ban the carbon plate--as many have suggested--but most people who study the shoe don't think that it would perform significantly differently if you substituted some other rigid material. I think the most plausible rule going forward will be a limitation on stack height. It's too hard regulate every innovation that goes into a midsole, but at least if you set a specific stack height, then everyone is working within the same limited parameters.

The only way I could see shoe tech really getting "out of hand" is if you start seeing thicker and thicker shoes, to the point that they start to resemble small stilts, greatly extending stride length, where running gait has to significantly change in order to take advantage of them. I actually do think that some small version of that is happening with the Vaporfly. Everyone says they have a different stride in them, and that they feel unstable just walking.

I think a lot of the opposition to the Vaporfly stems from a general misunderstanding of how shoes work. Cushioning, and not just the Vaporfly's cushioning, increases economy. Now, not all shoes increase economy, because sometimes the economy boost of cushioning is literally outweighed by the added weight of the shoe on your foot. But if you but someone on a treadmill belt that is covered by an EVA midsole, so they get the cushioning with each step but don't have to carry it, it's been shown that the increase in economy is significant. People seem to think that before the Vaporfly, shoes didn't make you faster, but that's just not true.

Partridge wrote:

Yawn. 2.7 % better efficiency, whatever that means. If it was really a 2.7 % increase in speed/decrease in time, that would mean about a 3:20 min gain for a 2:03/2:04 marathon runner. Where are all the 1:59-2:00 runners now?

I think it might be more like a 1-2 min improvement at best, if you look at actual performances. However, good enough for Kipchoge to better the WR he was chasing for years, but it won't make a 2:20 runner elite, nor does it really matter if your average hobby jogger runs 4:12 instead of 4:15.

Number refers to efficiency, if I read the article correctly- NOT speed- i.e. can't just drop 2.7% from a specific time.