Do elites hot rod their shoes?

This is essentially what Bowerman did with his athletes at Oregon. Custom made racing shoes...constantly modded and tweaked.

That's actually a really interesting question. And is there a difference between distance runners and sprinters?

I would imagine most pros run in stock shoes, but do the super elites get everything customized to their foot. I know that is the case with some pro soccer players - their cleats are constructed to a mold of their foot.

I would be curious to know if anyone had any first-hand accounts of this in running.

It is obvious that a lot of elites get plate/upper combinations or colorways that are not available to the public, but typically anything that ends up on a pro's foot ends up on the market, unless there are some interior changes we can't see.

shoe fetishist wrote:

unless there are some interior changes we can't see.

This is kinda what I'm getting at. I realize they come out with signature models for shoes...just like with musical instruments. But you can bet that the Eric Clapton signature series Strat that is available to consumers is not what EC takes up on stage with him...even though they look the same, are the same color, etc.

Michael Johnson's gold shoes were custom made for his feet. Jeremy Wariner also has customised shoes where the outside of the left shoe is made modified for helping run the turn better and also one of his feet is bigger than the other.

The Asics runners, Deena and Ryan, got special racers for the Olympics with special soles that were supposed to provide better grip on wet streets or if they got wet from pouring water on themselves during the race.

Otherwise, I kind of doubt that shoe manufacturers do much customization. Any customization probably comes in the form of a special orthotic/insole made by someone (pedorthist, etc.) working for the runner. It just isn't that easy to come up with a new mold for shoes or to hand craft something different. I even heard that Yao Ming couldn't get Nike to do a custom shoe for his massive feet.

i was on a tour of the nike campus in Beaverton Oregon and they have a shoe lab where they can make custom shoes on the spot. they do it for testing. i wouldn't be surprised if nike makes custom shoes for their top tier athletes like bekele and paula.

waxc wrote:

i was on a tour of the nike campus in Beaverton Oregon and they have a shoe lab where they can make custom shoes on the spot. they do it for testing. i wouldn't be surprised if nike makes custom shoes for their top tier athletes like bekele and paula.

haha, top runners bekele and paula. Good one.

You mean Rupp and Kara right?

Tele Caster wrote:

This is kinda what I'm getting at. I realize they come out with signature models for shoes...just like with musical instruments. But you can bet that the Eric Clapton signature series Strat that is available to consumers is not what EC takes up on stage with him...even though they look the same, are the same color, etc.

Well the difference here is the guts of a Strat can make a HUGE difference to tone: custom pickups, wiring, active circuitry, etc. There isn't a whole ton going on inside a shoe other than molding it precisely to a foot. Other than that there's really nothing you can do to the inside of a shoe.

As for outer modifications, there are lots of people who watch obsessively for any special spikes on elites. All that really happens is special colorways and plate/upper combinations.

Big John wrote:

This is essentially what Bowerman did with his athletes at Oregon. Custom made racing shoes...constantly modded and tweaked.

Yeah, we used to in the 70's at Oregon, too, when Bowerman was no longer around much.

There was a shoe repair place downtown, next to the Nike store, that has sheets of waffles from Bowerman and Nike, and you could get shoes re-soled, custom remade.

I took a pair of Tiger/Asics spikes and had the bottom covered in waffles to make a softer ride on the harder speed focused polyurethane Hayward field track.

One time when I was at the repair shop, I ran into Paul Geis (incredibly nice and funny guy, used to tease the hell out of Billy McChesney, lol), anyway Nike did not yet have any spikes that Geis liked yet, so he had the stripes taken off a pair of adidas and had some Nike stripes put on them!!! Paul was creative!

I also had some flats customized at the repair shop. Later I worked with an orthopedist, who was one of the three research and dev "centers" for Nike (Bowerman and a place back east being the other two I recall).

There was a kid at Oregon, a running enthusiast, who's dad owned a car dealership, who started making custom shoes around 78, who made this incredible moon shoes by hand, that were like running on clouds, they were a little too cushy, but man, when you wore them, everyone noticed!

Eugene was a wild place back then, so many runners, so much going on in pockets all over town... Much as it is again today.

jenius wrote:

Well the difference here is the guts of a Strat can make a HUGE difference to tone: custom pickups, wiring, active circuitry, etc. There isn't a whole ton going on inside a shoe other than molding it precisely to a foot. Other than that there's really nothing you can do to the inside of a shoe.

Well there's much more to it than just swapping parts. We all try that. Craftsmanship and quality materials...oh and time and attention...these all contribute to a much finer product than what is mass produced for a profit.

And also, I'm not talking about modifications made by just the shoe manufacturers like Nike. Sometimes world class performers come up with their own modifications, innovations, inventions, improvements, etc. that would not even be considered by someone who has not experienced what it is like to perform at that same level...whether it be run, play the piano, fly a plane, drive a race car, etc.

Maybe slap a testosterone patch on the insert.

That's all well and good, but you're awfully superstitious if you think there's significant room for shoes to improve performance through modding.

A shoe is for most of us a necessary evil, a bit of protection between foot and road. The best it can do is stay out of the way - in other words, be light, flexible, etc. It's not like they have tiny turbocharged engines which can be endlessly tweaked for more horsepower etc. A new and improved singlet ain't gonna shave a minute off the marathon world record, and while shoes may be a bigger factor than a singlet, same principle applies.

As for "finer materials and craftsmanship" that might show up in the long run as improved durability. But why would an elite gives a rat's ass whether his race flats are good for 30 miles or 3000?

From what I have heard the NIke elite runners got actual flywire in thier victorys and matumbos, but in the retail version the flywire was replaced with some cheap fishing line type material

It might also show up as a slight improvement in speed. Superstition aside, even a slight improvement in speed is worth pursuing at the world class level. Just look at what athletes are willing to put in their blood stream. Seems like tinkering with a shoe is not out of the question here...and in fact it sounds like from some of the responses they are doing it.

Kennedy used to run in Jasaris with the Eldoret spike plate ('96 Olympics). there's probably lots of other examples.

I thinkmost train in a regular model unless dealing with an injury like PF or achilles problems where there sponsor might whip up something special for them.

I know that Hall and Deena got specially made flats for racing and I remember reading that Tergat got a specially made racing flat with extra support on the instep to control pronation.

Tele Caster wrote:

Well there's much more to it than just swapping parts. We all try that. Craftsmanship and quality materials...oh and time and attention...these all contribute to a much finer product than what is mass produced for a profit.

The only difference in material is that a very very few spikes have carbon fiber plates, but that is extremely uncommon and hasn't been seen to my knowledge in a while. That and the early pro models of the Vic/Matumbo used a different thread in the flywire, which by all accounts was an almost completely insignificant difference. What you need to understand here is that, as far as shoe production goes, modern mechanized techniques are actually better than hand production in most aspects. The precision stitching is something that can't be matched by hand; you'll end up with more material in the shoe. You can more exactly match your initial design to the finished product with automation. Therefore, after the actual design phase, "time and attention" isn't really relevant.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the comparison between EVH's Frankenstein and Lagat's Victories is nothing like an accurate one.

Look, all you have to do is watch a pro race and identify the shoes the guys are wearing. They are almost all stock models. Unlike with guitars, you can tell all there is to know about a shoe by looking at it from the outside. As mentioned repeatedly, the only mods you'll see will be a few custom plate/upper combos, a few custom colorways/graphics. That's really all there is to it. Unless you believe there's a "magic ingredient" hidden in the midsole somewhere, there's nothing you can do to a shoe that won't be immediately obvious.