Salvatore Stitchmo wrote:
basque wrote:
The tech has improved dramatically, but the real question I think is that it provides a clear and unlawful advantage by that amount of energy return that it gives (bouncing it is?).
The actual facts are that the top 4 perfonmances (and 8th, 9th and 10th) in mens marathon are made with these shoes in the span of a year. Along with the WR in HM last month, wich in turn bettered the previous record of last year, also with the vaporfly.
Kipchoge may be an exceptional athlete, as Bekele is, or Kamworor, or Kosgei, but we are talking minutes here from their own PB, athletes who are in some cases aged 34-35, I don't think that is an age apt for much progression.
To get them banned, or at least regulated, is for the good of sport and equality among the athletes and perfonmances, it sounds awful to get things banned, but such was the case of swiming and those swimsuits some years ago. And nobody made a fuss about it.
Broski, just to be 1000% clear - despite what any shoe brand may want you to believe or what you perceive - no shoe, no shoe technology, nothing GIVES or GENERATES you energy. In fact energy is the by-product of the maximum force your body can generate and direct into the ground and what the ground gives you back. (Energy being 1/2 your mass x your velocity squared and your velocity is related to the force you can impart and have returned by the surface you run on)
So shoes like the vaporfly are simply economy or efficiency monsters (go read Ross Tucker’s blog for him to explain economy) that enable the most force imparted to the ground and then returned to your bodies mass.
The shoe won’t generate any of that itself (only something like a prosthetic spring will do this) it will only be better (more economic/efficient) at getting it (force) back to you.
On this topic hard to believe the human race would want to ban a shoe that simply increases the efficiency of a system of which the key component is something our bodies generate and provide. Think about that for second. It’s ridiculous. Until a shoe is provided that actively generates its own force and supplies this to our bodies then quite frankly how can anything be off the table. One brand is just doing it better than everyone else at the moment.
Sounds nice but would you still say that if everyone was running on spring stilts or 6-inch stacks of foam?