Do you remember in 2018, when top NCAA perf was 7:45.86?

I think I've basically made both of these arguments in the last month. I'm starting to lean on the shoes just being really good. There are a couple of things I still wonder about though. The first is that I feel like Americans and Europeans are far more competitive on the global stage than we have been in a longggg time. Centro was fantastic in championships, but Nuguse won more DL 1500s last year than every other American in history combined. His year looked way more like Steve Scott's best years than anything Centro ever did. Jakob is the best in the world right now, breaking world records and doubling at worlds. His countryman Nordas came out of nowhere (ie Jakob's old coach) to medal last year. Laros and that one Australian(?) kid are looking like Jakob jrs. And of course, 2 Scotts won 1500m titles in back to back years, reminiscent of those 2 old British guys that used to be really good in the 80s. Plus Hocker and Kessler are legit medal threats at a super young age. The 5k/10k have Fisher to fill in Galen Rupp's old role of being the only white guy up there, but Garcia Romo got bronze last year, and Jakob got gold. In the DL final, Nuguse and Jakob went 1-2 in the mile, and Jakob and Fisher went 1-3 in the 3k.

Another thing that makes me wonder is the way championships are run. If everyone knows it's gonna be a 3:30 race, wouldn't they want to be in sub-3:30 shape? Kerr and Wightman specifically said that's why they built strength. They know Jakob or Kipsang or Cheruiyot want the pace hot, so they train to run fast. Everyone on this board always says "This guy needs to take the pace out hard because this other guy has a better kick", but when an athlete actually does it and it works, like Cheruiyot in 2019, you all get surprised that every athlete starts training to run 3:29 in a championship.

Those two things put together make me wonder if there's a significant amount that's attributed to a mindset shift, or something cultural or something. The shoes are definitely a huge factor, there's like 3 NAU kids who have run faster than Cragg's record that stood for 20 years, but also, how many athletes ran times that would have been collegiate records, but they ran them after NCAAs? Lawi Lalang ran 13:00 (and I think he still ran another season?), but it didn't count because it was after NCAAs. Wheating ran 3:30 back in like 2010. Centro ran 3:34 in 2011, which would've been an NCAA record, before getting bronze at WCs. I think in the past there were guys like Centro, who had a good enough kick to win championships, which were slow, so they never ran fast. The Centro that medaled in 2011 must've been able to run faster than 3:34, but he only had to run 3:36 to medal. Mo Farah ran freaking 3:28, in today's races, he might've be able to pull off the 1500m-5k-10k triple without super shoes.

I'm still thinkin about it, but I get the sense it's more like 2s per mile. There was just a culture of not going for it for all of the 2010s. There were 2 random 5ks where a bunch of guys ran 12:4xs in the whole decade because everyone was so scared of Mo Farah the entire time. Europeans and Americans decided to stop being losers and start running fast, so the Ethiopians have stepped up their game, and the Kenyans have kinda fallen flat on their face idk what's going on over there. Disclaimer I'm not talking about the marathon.

Kenyans have been busted for doping in enormous numbers, over 300, while many moved to the roads. Meanwhile, Jakob has led a resurgence of Europeans because they believe that they can be among the world elite, since he did it. So, there are heaps of good European distance runners again for the first time since the late 1980s. Americans see that success as well--and Centro and Jager and others were part of the resurgence even before Jakob. But for them, most of the time, they weren't competitive in DL races. Jakob showed that they could compete day in, day out with the best in the world. Now you have Laros, Myers, and other top European and Australian prospects, alongside young talents in their 20s, Nuguse, Hocker, Kessler from the U.S. and the Brits are almost as good as they ever were in the 1500m and mile with Kerr, Wightman, Mills, Stonier, Fogg, and on and on.

What is the deal with you guys who won’t acknowledge that the shoes (technology) has improved and makes a difference?!
Is it pride or stubbornness or what? It correlates exactly and every fast runner is wearing them. Every one.

The old guys who ran on cinder tracks would surely admit that mondo tracks are faster. Old pole vaulters would admit new poles are more effective.

I don’t use my old point and shoot 4 megapixel digital camera from 2004, I use the contemporary, much- improved equipment.

Let’s accept the improvement and move on. It’s fine!

It's definitely the shoes. Listen to the Ben True podcast from 3 years ago5 to 5 seconds per mile. 1250 for 5000 is 1305 from pre super shoes

Yeah, but Kipsang and Cheruiyot have still both run very well recently. Kipsang was 4th last year, and ran 3:30 at altitude a couple years ago. Cheruiyot was 8th in 3:30 just after turning 19. Ethiopians and Kenyans were historically crushing the 5k last year for the entire season, but they got crushed at Worlds.

My contention is more that if shoes were entirely responsible for the increase in times we've seen, then Kenya would still be dominating the 1500, and Ethiopia would still be dominating the 5k, but they'd all be running 3-4s/mile faster than they used to. But that's not what's happened. Instead, we've seen America/Europe/Australia become more competitive, even as times have gotten significantly faster/fields have gotten much deeper. What that signifies to me is that non-African countries are developing more talent better, for a variety of reasons. I like what you said about Jakob proving that Europeans could compete on the circuit day in and day out, which I think is probably true, and he won Olympic Gold at age 20, while being known for not having a good kick. Kerr and Wightman adapted to be able to run 3:29, and both won for it. Fields are probably so much deeper because there are way more people training to run fast, instead of 75% of them training to run 3:35 with a huge kick.

In the US, we've seen a huge mindset shift at the HS level with Newbury Park's insane success. Everyone thought they were a school of generational talents, but by the time L&L were seniors, people had begun to catch up with them. The whole "4:20 isn't fast" thing made a lot of people mad, but 5 years later most people can't name all the HSers that went sub-4 last year. Hocker seemed like the second coming of Centro in 2021 after he ran 3:50i, won USAs, and ran 3:31 for 6th at the Olympics. Centro got bronze with a 3:34 PR in 2011, only 3s slower than Hocker. Do we really think if WCs were a 3:30 race instead of a 3:36 race, Centro couldn't have run 3:32-33? That's much more in line with my 2s/mile prediction.

This trend hasn't really continued in the steeple or the 10k, for whatever that's worth. Fisher is basically where Rupp was at his peak. He doesn't have a medal, but he's been 4th/5th, and he's come 3rd in the DL 3k/5k (and been more competitive on the circuit in general). His 26:33 is 11s faster than Rupp's 26:44, which is much more in line with 2s/mile. That's a sample size of 1 though. Since we're comparing to Rupp, though, I think it's fun to note that Nico Young just ran 12:57 at age 21. Rupp set his first AR during his senior year of college, a 13:18i 5k. Rupp had the altitude house, but Nico lives at like 7k elevation, trains with world class athletes, and has probably the best 5k coach in the country. And Nico's 12:57 was run at BU with people to race to the line. Rupp's 800/5000 PRs are now slower than Nico's. Rupp was clearly the best at 10k, so I hope Nico runs one soon. It'll be interesting comparing him, Rupp, and Fisher. If they can run 26:20, maybe the shoes are worth 4s/mile.

Shoes and now microdosing at the college level explain it.

If they're just a placebo, have them run a few races without them. See how that goes.

This is the crux of the shoe debate, right here! Why on earth is it so important for the current generation to deny the boost provided by the shoes?

As the poster above says - Let’s accept the improvement and move on. It’s fine!

No doubt it is the shoe technolgy. One could look at the 2018-2020 years and see that once Nike came out with the SuperShoe in 2017 how much faster the athletes ran during those times. You had women 5000 meter runners going 15:45 before SuperShoes and then running 15:15 with them. Yes, the athlete would normal progress in their training/racing, but not to that level. SuperShoes have destroyed comparisons to the past generations of runners.

Well, then, take a race where time doesn't really matter, only belief and mental toughness. Go watch the finish videos of women's NCAA cross country in the early 2000s and in this year. Same level of carnage, same picture of total exhaustion across the field. Don't tell me the previous generation weren't "going for it".

Not how a placebo works

+1

There has been a big shift in the mindset of high school and NCAA athletes. The shoes alone are worth maybe 1-2 seconds in a mile, but the mindset is worth 2-3 and that's why we're seeing times 3-5 seconds faster across the board.

And cross country is also where we've seen the least improvement across the board (only considering times run on the same course). NP had four guys that could run 8:30s and none of them could run as fast as Fernandez at Woodward Park (despite explicitly targeting that mark every time they went out).

You guys with your mindsets. You think Galen Rupp didn't have the right mindset? Just couldn't quite hack it with all the great mindsets out there today?

Most in this thread are either kids with massive recency bias, or current athletes who don't want to admit the shoe advantage.

Ran in the 80s, out of curiosity I bought 2 pair of super shoes dragonfly and zoom x, wow what a difference! I still have my old asics tigers and there is no comparison. If u don't believe they make a difference grab a pair and run some 200s in the x and 800s or mile in the dragonfly. Then run in some old nike or asics.

Give me a break. The marathon world record has dropped 5 1/2 seconds per mile in the marathon since 2014. Do you have any idea how much supershoes have changed the marathon? You went from minimally cushioned flats that left your legs toasted by the end of the race, to super-cushy, super-bouncy, high-stack carbon plated supershoes that were actually lighter!

Compare that to track spikes. The spikeplate itself hasn't changed. You were already running on a rubberized track which provided some cushioning. They weigh the same or slightly more than the old spikes. The only differences are that you've replaced a rigid PEBA plate with a carbon fiber plate, and you've swapped a thin layer of EVA foam for a slightly thicker layer of superfoam. No way have superspikes changed things as much as road supershoes.

I can’t imagine Joe Falcon with the super shoes. Pretty confident he would have gone sub 7:40 and sub 13:00, IMHO

No, the carbon plates in super spikes have a designed “snap back” (uses the force from your weight in the vertical direction and transfers some of that force in the horizontal direction) effect which propels the user forward during the push off phase. The effect is minimal per stroke, but the effect is significant when it adds up.

Runners who are currently racing have a big reason to claim that an increase in performance is NOT the shoes. They want to compare themselves to past runners and claim they are better, whether at a local race, school record, NCAA qual times, NCAA records, etc. It is really an ego thing.

The road shoes dramatically changed the marathon. Teare and Hocker shattered the NCAA record in their first race in super spikes, both running more than 5s PRs. This was BEFORE COVID! So the COVID mentality shift argument is pretty dubious. As others have stated NO ONE is using old style spikes anymore. And with them NCAA qual times are 3s faster in the mile/1500m, 10s in 3000m, 15s in 5000m and close to 30 in the 10000m than they were for the entire decade preceding the super spikes.

I would not want to admit that my new school record was not equivalent to the slower time somebody ran 20+ years ago either. But that is the reality.