Are the shoes a double-benefit?

The recovery benefits are only musculoskeletal - it doesn’t make a difference for the immunocompromised effects of overtraining.

However, during the same timeframe, there was an introduction of new medicinal technology: the mRNA vaccine.

Except the spikes don’t have a carbon fiber plate.

Yeah, that's why pros train on grass... like at lest one of their workouts in the week is purely on grass. Other times they run on the track, most tracks are polyurethane and rubber composite, which is pretty soft stuff compared to roads and sidewalks. This is what saves your legs and allows for harder workouts and more frequently. Not some gimicky technology.

Its not gimmicky tech if it actually works. And it does work hence the faster times we see these days.

The combination of elites training on grass/trails AND the newer shoes that also save legs from the pounding clearly contribute to getting in a higher training load.

And we all know carbon plates on the track is the cherry on top,.

Nice of you to pull this out of your ass.

That is part of the double benefit and has been discussed in detail many times elsewhere and on letsrun.com. What I think is not mentioned is the musculo-skelatal benefit durind the *heats*. A lot of the fatique from the heats is muscle related. The shoes do help a lot with that I think.

I think one second per lap is accurate. What do you think they are worth? It’s not zero.

Lmao. The shoes make you faster. Like a lot faster. The recovery stuff is completely marginal compared to the effect on speed. We had 8 HIGH SCHOOLERS break 4 IN THE SAME RACE and people still cant understand this.

I don't care what you think, this is an empirical question.

Many current runners that are getting the direct benefits of the technology don't want to admit that their times are impacted by technology. Many want to claim it's purely the result of "better training," etc. At the same time it's interesting because the tech deniers are all still racing in the new technology. Why do the unsponsored guys race in expensive carbon plated super foam shoes if they don't have an impact race times + recovery, etc.?

The shoes and tracks have seen a massive drop in times

It seems to be a second or more per lap

the improvement on the track, whether one second per lap, or otherwise, is most certainly not even across events.

at the very highest levels it hasn't given anything to the 800. somewhere around 1 total second in the 1500--at the very highest level. i think it gives way more benefit to less efficient high school and college runners.

the major benefits seem to occur as you get into 3000 and up. maybe the shoes make a bigger difference where economy becomes more important.

Dragonflys do not have, and have never had, a carbon fiber plate. The Victory series has had a carbon fiber plate for years (Victory Elite, Elite 2, and now Zoom Victory). The "recovery benefits" are nebulous at best; many pros (Cole Hocker being a big one) have actually moved away from training in so-called super-shoes because they felt they were actually MORE stressful on their legs and were causing injuries.

Additionally, there is zero empirical, scientific evidence that the Dragonflys have a direct impact on economy, power, recovery, or any other metric that may effect race times. This is not the case for the Vaporfly series (which has had a number of studies showing it has a measurable impact on economy, most noticeable at high speeds in comparison with traditional road flats).

The improvement in race times started in 2021, but has continued over the last three years. A good example is in high school 3200 times, where the number of sub-9:00 clockings doubled over the 3 years from 2018-2021, but has since doubled again over the 3 years from 2021-2024. Unfortunately, because the release of the shoes is correlated with one of the biggest global social shocks in the history of the sport (COVID-19), it is nearly impossible to isolate the impact they have had with any sort of natural experiment. Therefore, we must rely on traditional RCTs: which, once again, have not shown the spikes to have any significant, measurable impact on any factor that could effect race times.

I will add that this is not the first time in the sport's history where the introduction of a new spike coincided with a significant drop in race times across the board. The first 2-3 years of the Nike Victory release saw many records broken and a measurable improvement in both elite times and high school times. The difference between then and now is that Nike's marketing has been much more effective at convincing people that the shoes are responsible. I think a large part of this was the release of the Vaporflys, which have a much better case for being a legitimate "super-shoe". Nike rode that wave and associated their next set of track spikes with the Vaporfly brand (that's why even the sprint spikes and football boots/soccer cleats have "fly" in their name, despite sharing zero design elements with the Vaporfly/Alphafly), thereby allowing them to claim responsibility for every fast time run after their release. You have people out there claiming Dragonflys are the reason we had 3 women run 3:55 at the Trials, even though literally none of them were wearing Nike Dragonflys. This kind of mass-marketing further muddies the waters, because as any good coach knows, the placebo effect is extremely powerful for distance running.

TL:DR; Vaporflys are a legitimate super-shoe, Dragonflys are not, any kind of natural experiment comparing pre-Dragonfly and post-Dragonfly times cannot effectively isolate the effect of the Dragonflys, and I have yet to see an RCT that provides hard evidence for the Dragonflys being a super-shoe.

it's blanket 1 second in every race? Doubtful. That's also a conspicuously round number that probably doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It could be higher or lower, but it sounds suspicious.

I think the training & recovery is by far the bigger advantage, especially when paired with the major impacts of biometric tracking, nutrition science, etc.

Here are the improvements for the WRs:

800m-none

1000m- none

1500m/mile-none

2000m-1.5 seconds

Steeple-none

3000m/2-mile-1.5 seconds

5000m-2 seconds

10000m-6.5 seconds

The only new HS distance record is a 2 second improvement in the 5000m.

The new road racing shoes are worth about 2 minutes for a marathon and seem to be every bit as fast as running on a track, but the new track shoes have no effect.

Really? “Many pros” have actually moved away from super shoes? Please name several of them, because it appears to be the exact opposite. Every pro I see on social media is wearing super shoes for their hard workouts. Everybody from Jakob to college kids to high school kids.

Cooper Teare, Cole Hocker, Hobbs Kessler, Sinclaire Johnson, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, Galen Rupp all have mentioned it at some point. I am sure they are not alone. What you see on social media may not be the reality; pros aren't posting every workout, they're posting the fast race-pace tune-ups (which are run in race shoes). Ben Thomas in particular is a big advocate against doing all your workouts in super shoes.

His ass is pretty accurate.

If i was a retired pro i would probably also talk down modern performances by saying something ridicolus like spikes help 1 second per lap. Marathon times have clearly improved after carbon shoes, and wave lights have helped with pacing longer distances. But the effect of modern spikes like dragonfly are almoast zero compared the Victory shoes from 10 years ago