Move over super shoes - Feldspar claims it anticipates its track "will be 20 per cent faster than the Paris Olympic track"

Every single Olympics they claim the track is X% faster than the last one. If you took all these claims at face value and added them up we should be seeing one minute miles by now.

Most of us have run on everything from a cheaply built and worn out high school track to a really nice, brand new DI college track. Some of you have even run at places like Hayward. And you've probably observed that, timewise, there's very little difference. Hell, give me a flat, straight road and I'll probably beat my mile time on the track.

A grass track can be manipulated to be faster, by using a different type of grass, cutting it very short, changing the soil beneath the grass, modifying the moisture content, etc.

Better to just have everyone run cross country naked.

But then we'd have to debate if running on Bermuda is faster than running on Kentucky Bluegrass or Korea and what type of soil base is faster than others. What's the ideal grass height? The ideal soil dirt to sand mixture?

Who exactly is asking for this???

That's what is great about human ingenuity and economics.

I never asked for the Cheesy Gordita Crunch, but now that it's here, I sure as hell am going to eat it.

English translation please?

And while at it, get rid of those lights which is a cheat.

Jakob has started doing one of his threshold sessions at a trampoline park. This prepares him for the ridiculous energy return on modern tracks these days.

Yes there is. However you can minimize the negatives by adjusting your form. Jakob just glides across the track so I have to imagine he would fare the best on a track that is "too bouncy".

"Malmo, stay away from those kids. These kids will die of radiation poisoning too fast to be able to use the new track technology."

I second this proposal.

There is a good word in German called "Hemschwelle" that means the psychological barrier to doing something. If that barrier is removed, then people just start "doing whatever they want" and things change without regard for norms or traditions.

It happened a bit in our sport when people saw the success of the Vapor Fly Next% shoes in 2016 (Rupp FTW) and since then, people are more and more and more open to just doing whatever they can.

Do a thought experiment, if someone invents a bounce track where you are always 30 seconds faster per mile, we would know that is b.s. but we'd still be tempted to run on it. After a year or two, people would just consider this the new normal.

So, we agree a 30 second per mile improvement would be stupid. What about 20 seconds? 10 seconds? 5 seconds? Where do we draw the line? Or do you think it should just be a technology free-for-all?

I said recently to a long, long time track fan (he's in his 80's and has seen a LOT of athletics) that I would pay to see today's athletes running, just for once, racing on a cinder track for the whole meet. 1500, 5,000, 800, 200, 100 with basic spikes. Can you imagiune watching the cinders fly in HD behind some of today's best runners?

And TV could market the hell out of throwback track.

I actually think that Jakob would be one of those who'd sign up. He doesn't duck competition but actually enjoys it. No way would Syd show up. Some of the Brits probably like Muir. A few of the Americans... maybe.

This is a very good point. And it makes me think of the 4:00-mile, which a lot of non-runners consider a psychological barrier. Bannister "showed that it was possible" and then the rest of the world followed. Things don't really work that way. But Bannister did break a real psychological barrier, which was getting two other elite runners to be his pacemakers. Makes me wonder how much longer it would have taken for rabbits to become prevalent if Bannister has broken 4 the old-fashioned way.

so let me get this right:

1) sport allows essentially springs in the shoes = faster times

2) sport will now allow springs in the track = faster times

3) next sport will allow athletes to wear jets pack = faster times

4) then sport will allow athletes to wear exo-skeleton suits = faster times

and of course we all know doping is widespread = for faster times

what a great sport

And I also wonder what Kipchoge's Breaking 2 runs have done to the psychology of the sport. Just like the old rules/norms against pacemaking, the current ones (nutrition stations are stationary, rabbits can't cycle in and out, etc.) are somewhat arbitrary, as all rules must be. Why not massage them a little bit? After all, these could have been the rules. But then you end up feeling like the rules are optional. Who knows, maybe the Barcelona half marathon organizers figured it was fine for the pace car to hang back just a little to give Kiplimo a bit of a boost. Maybe some marathon will add wavelight or lay down a super-bouncy carpet. Or do other technically-legal stuff like enlist pacemakers to grab the drink bottles for the top runner during the first half of a world record attempt.

Or at the very least there needs to be a table to convert times to "basic" for qualification purposes we are going to have trampoline tracks and Nascar-like bank angles.

Absolutely ridiculous that the NCAA will give people 45+ second conversions in a 5k at some tracks, but people who run at BU just get to use that as their qualifying time.

Dumb and would like to see this race to the bottom stop, but it probably won’t. This is why I think all the obsession here and in our sport and fans generally with RECORDS is silly. I no longer really care about times and records. These are races, and the focus should be on winning races and competing.

It'd be legit cool if there was a barefoot racing series on grass tracks (or more likely dirt considering grass can be slippery) that just focused on competition, no times. The times are starting to turn into a joke with all the track and shoe improvements. These days you have to be like "okay this teenager is running sub-4 but 10 years ago he would have been hitting more like 4:05".