Records are being broken - is it ALL shoes?

There is likely a placebo effect as well. It seems like every race now is like only what Stanford or the Euro circuit used to be. Everyone wants to "get some", even if the shoes are actually only a second or two. If everyone in the field is 95% convinced they will PR that race..."voila!" Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Also the indoor tracks now are abundant and far faster than even a decade ago. And when people are chopping time in February on super-tuned indoor tracks, the head of steam keeps up for the rest of the year.

Except many times it does not provide momentum for the year because the indoor track is so fast that they will never match that time outdoors. See Johnny Gregorek 3:49.98 and Sam Prakel 3:50.94 indoors in 2019. Neither will ever run that fast again. The main reason is because it was never legitimate in terms of what they could do outdoors. 

This assumes far too much.

No trend with any proven doping or doping testing milestone was as significant in both terms of quantity and quality, as the introduction of the new shoe technology.

The benefits of drafting and even pacemaking are proven. We see it in practice when a marathon organizes pacemakers for fast times, and in the extreme with Kipchoge's sub-2 efforts.

We simply don't have any data on the proven benefit of "PEDs" on elite performance for distance events.

But the point applies regardless of why the other competitors are faster. Some think Baumann's sole sub-13 performance was caused by a positive test 2 years later, ignoring the arrow of time in cause and effect. I think he was lucky enough to be sucked along in a vacuum by the 4 runners in front of him, as he took 5th in his fastest race ever.

Another effect is that, due to the pandemic, athletes are not racing as much as before, and they are fresher, less injured, and hungrier.

Just looking at the 1500/mile for 2021, #10 on the outdoor list is 3:35. Indoors only Hocker and Teare were under that, and they went on to better things outdoors. No evidence that people were "peaking out" indoors.

Plus better recovery and less pounding thanks to the shoes.

This allows for more mileage, increased intensity, and easier double-interval days. 

Fans only see the end result and misunderstand the causation. 

But of course you must have misstated this as almost nobody would be so dense as to think a positive test caused a sub 13 performance, but rather the PED may have been a contributing cause of the performance and triggered the positive test. It is not clear whether a positive test 2 years later tells us much regarding 2 years earlier but the possibility remains that this PED was being utilized by him earlier despite no known failed tests at that time.

So you agree that running in a pack with others doped to the maxx also benefits the (allegedly) non-epo maxxed runner?

You're too funny.

It was generally agreed in the time of Ovett, Coe, Cram that athletes were reaching the limits of potential. Yet in little more than a decade you had El G running sub 3:30 literally every week, and almost four seconds faster than peak Cram and Aouita pushing each other to the limit in Nice. And a host of other runners producing similar ridiculous times.

Super shoe times do not compare (yet) with the destruction of records brought about by EPO. The 1980's was the absolute peak of middle-distance running in terms of natural talents and depth. Yet their times were made to look mediocre in the 1990's by a collection of guys who we probably would never even have heard of if they hadn't been injecting EPO every single day and night.

I started running in 1971. The shoes then make minimalist shoes now supportive.

Seriously, if shoes didn't advance they way they have been I would never have been able to run post high school. I spent more time injured than healthy.

New, more supportive/cushioned shoes and I can run, train more and better and race faster as a result. I'm 62 and I can still run daily.

Yes, it's the shoes and it always has been.

Hypothetically, if we assume being "doped to the maxx" actually brings benefits.

I did say "the point applies regardless of why the other competitors are faster".

This assumes the clean runner would be talented enough to stay in the pack.

You are too sad.

Was it generally agreed?  By whom?  For whom?

Sounds like you are making a strong argument against the notion of any genuine revival among non-Africans cleanly running faster than Ovett, Coe, and Cram, who were reaching the limits of potential.

If EPO could bring these benefits, we shouldn't still be talking about Ovett, Coe, and Cram nearly 40 years later.

Running fans are so naive. There is a lot more science goes into drugs than shoes, and drugs have become more and more prevalent in the sport over the last few decades. You all imagine your "clean" heroes are beating doped competitors. If athletes gain advantage - however small - from their shoes, why would they forgo even greater advantage from drugs that almost always can't be detected?

I fundamentally don't get this but hear it all the time. Is a PR meaningful if you are aware that it was due to a performance aid? Like if you aren't looking to win the race, I just don't understand the appeal of a technological aid to lower your time. Is nothing about the simple act of running and comparing yourself to who you were yesterday? You have invalidated the comparison.

+1 on this take.

When I was in high school our training was not optimal at all... low mileage and too much intensity. 

I think training has improved a lot and coaches are more clued in on how to build fitness over time.  It takes many years to fully build aerobic capacity so if kids start training right at an early age they are more likely to reach their potential and not get hurt by the time they are at peak performance age (early to mid 20s). 

So high school training is what is producing records at the elite and pro level? Yet we see Kenyan md runners recording world-class times while taking the sport up in their twenties and US marathon runners peaking in the late thirties when they were mostly not training or competing seriously at a younger age, let alone high school. Hundreds - maybe thousands - of kids compete at high school; very few go on to become pro and they weren't always the best at high school. I could come up with a simpler theory for faster times today.

Drugs can be detected and a bust is often career ending. The shoes are legal, thus no risk and the best explanation for a broad improvement, not merely at the very top but also a bit below, like among national class, college or the best HS athletes. In Europe athletes who are not full professionals and not guaranteed national team spots but a bit below (which does not mean they are not taking drugs but it seems hardly worth the risk of the shame and blame for being 5th best marathon runner in Germany and making a few 1000 Euros a year from sponsors) that have clearly improved on a large scale, most obviously in marathon and half but now also indoors. Drugs are not excluded but these improvements and the shoes since ca. 2019 are such an obvious correlation that it would be foolish to discount the benefits of the supershoes. I don't think it's more than ~1-2 sec. in the 1500m/mile etc. but this is obviously enough to push a few more sub 4 mile or sub 3:38 or whatever. And the bonus might be disproportionally more in the 3k and longer.

Much of this is **actually** due to separate indoor and outdoor record books. The truth is indoors provides as good as and often a better setup to run fast than outdoors. There are more lightning fast indoor tracks than ever and with no wind you're ensured perfect conditions. Pacing has improved and opportunity has exploded. I'd consider all indoors time exactly as we do outdoors.

Now the shoes definitely help. I think one second for 600m is high. One second for 1000 though? Seems right on to me. The idea of Johnny Gregorek being a 3:47.3 miler in Super Spikes doesn't make sense to me.

US/UK running is on the upswing, but it's worth noting that with all of these factors going as well we are seeing 7:24-7:27 3,000m runs commonly, 12:30-12:50 performances, and 26:00-26:30 performances or something like Ethiopia's really stacked surging 10,000 champs last year. Everyone is indeed getting faster and the spikes are the most dominant factor, though give credit to better coaching, racing opportunities and training in the US/UK as well.