Vaporflys (presumably) crush it again. Produce amazing times in Valencia. 26:38 10k, A 2:03:51 and 4 2:18s!!!

Did Augustine Choge DNF? did he even start?

I think...I think...I think no one actually cares what you think. The shoes are super accessible. Not Nikes problem that the other companies are making inferior shoes. Time for other companies to step up, Nike isn’t making other athletes run for these companies. There is legit not reason the shoes shouldn’t be allowed at the olympics. If you are going to disallow these shoes then everyone should have to run in trainers.

More shoe talk coming on this week's podcast? I say yes!

basically.

also I swear most people moaning about shoes don't even run marathons which makes it more amusing.

Juice Springsteen wrote:

Did Augustine Choge DNF? did he even start?

DNF at half mark, he had fallen off badly and running 3:20 / km pace at that point. I guess his next marathon will be labeled as a debut again.

PIK wrote:

People understand perfectly why the shoe produces faster times. The controversy comes from the fact that they produce disruptively faster times.

The only disruptive thing about the shoes is that they highlighted the complacency of the running shoe industry of the pre-vaporfly era. They were stuck in the line of thinking that emphasized light weight and minimalism of road racing shoes and essentially kept recreating versions of the same shoe. I would feel pretty bad if I was a lead designer in a company and a rival creates this superior of a product (as superior as the vaporfly is portrayed to be). And of course now that one company has been able to break the mold and finally show progress, everyone is complaining that "these are not the shoes our fathers used to run in" or whatever.

Cheptegei is absolutely in shape to run the no-shoe advantage world record in the road 10k on a really fast course like Valencia. Good to see Guye Adola run a good one again after his 2:03 at Berlin a few years ago being followed by underperformance and probably injuries. Good also to see Sondre Moen run close to his pr after injury problems.

A number of the women are very high quality, Vivian Cheruiyot, for instance, and about the other Ethiopians you've not heard about, suffice it to say that they are probably the training partners of the famous ones in a system that produces great ones all over the place. It's the system (very high altitude, dirt roads, a lot of speed and distance, lots of hills, great training partners, and drugs) more than the individuals.

Bdubs wrote:

Geez Rojo/Wejo, this has to stop.

I don't like Nike either, but stop it. You guys just come off as jerks delegitimizing these performances.

On Geb:

-He was old. His 203:59 came near the end of his 30s

You also fail to mention the SLEW of sub 205s post Geb/ pre-vaporflys. Dickson Chumba seems to be one of the first of a wave of "no names"to run fast.

Africans are ALL going to the marathon sooner. That has a bigger impact than shoes. Races are also consistently going out at sub 102 pace, creating many more fast times.

Do the Vaporflys make some people run faster? YES! But that's not the entire picture, and you two are creating a very misleading narrative.

I agree with a lot of this. Do I think the Vaporfly's help? Yes. But if you were the only running content I looked at, I'd have a very warped view of this issue tho. All you do is bash it. There's no balance to the conversation. The reality is nobody can give a clear answer how much the shoes help. You say Adola was the best runner in this race -- wasn't he wearing the new Adidas flat that's coming out next year? Wouldn't he be wearing a similar enough shoe? Shoe companies have had time to develop their flats. If they don't want to change, that's on them but I'd gladly buy a Brooks/Saucony carbon plated shoe.

I think the shoes help but I don't want to discredit current runners. Kipchoge ran 2:01. 2:03-high is still a far cry from that. The women ran 2:18-19 today. That's not 2:14-15. There are so many factors to consider. A ton of people are going to the roads versus the track. You see people line up in Dubai every year and run like they did today. You get a large pack committed to going out at 2:04/2:18 and you get results on a good weather day. Unless you can definitively tell me if the shoes help by :30 or 3:00, I don't know think you're doing anything productive for sport (which is typical).

It also mystifies me that the Brojos don't understand how good Nike is at marketing. Although maybe you wouldn't with your early 2000s website design and dreadful social media content. Nike loves the ambiguity of how much the shoe helps. They've run very controlled/fake events to drive more people to the shoes. Everybody wants to wear them but nobody can say how much they help. And if they do help, what is stopping other companies from catching up to their product?

rojo wrote:

Do i think some dude who has done next to nothing as a pro, whose career highlight was was 4th at world juniors, is a better marathoner than Haile G? Absolutely not. Remember, it was just 11 years ago that Haile Gs 2:03:59 was the first sub-204 ever.

Rojo, with this logic we should still be running barefoot.

Do Nike Vaporfly give advantage? Absolutely Yes. But they are not the only shoes in history to produce significant increase performance. The exact same thing happened around 2012 when Adidas Boost came out.

If you don't believe look into statistics. There was insane jump in fast marathon times around that time.

Running is still very democratic sport. You can still get best shoes for 250$. Look into cycling. Without 10000$ bike you are basically out of competition even in amateur level.

I was half-asleep watching this live on YouTube. Go to about 17:00 in the video and watch the antics of the male pacers for the lead women, especially the woman that came in second. These goofballs (not talking about the women, obviously) should've been yanked off the course. I do think that in a women's race, the male pacers should be pulled off the course by 40K, letting the women battle it out alone. Is there any rule that was being broken here? Yuck.

.....well, try 16:00.

nv4

Running is still very democratic sport. You can still get best shoes for 250$. Look into cycling. Without 10000$ bike you are basically out of competition even in amateur level.

This just shows that you don't understand cycling. In UCI regulated events, the is a lower limit on a bike's weight. You can get a bike at that limit for $3000 or less; beyond that, improvements are largely cosmetic. All Pros race in pretty much the same equipment (or at least, they have pretty much the same choice regardless of who their team's sponsor is).

As someone who has run two races now in the 4% shoes. I have to say all the hype is ridiculous. Have I run fast? Yes. Did I have to work hard to do it..Very much YES! so even if the shoes are helping. Your legs still have to move fast.

You also have to think. This is now the era of the sub 2:02 marathon. Now that it has been done more runners are going to get closer, just like so many runner realized that sub 4 was possible for a mile.

Stop questioning every performance like 2:04 marathons are impossible.

Haile G. ran sub 2:04 back in 2008.

Road racing should be treated like cross country now - ignore the times and just look at the place. Anyone not racing in the Nike vaporfly's is a complete idiot (either the runner or their sponsor for making them run in inferior shoes).

Not to mention drug testing at road races is garbage and the % of them doped is probably astronomical.

DNF choge wrote:

Juice Springsteen wrote:

Did Augustine Choge DNF? did he even start?

DNF at half mark, he had fallen off badly and running 3:20 / km pace at that point. I guess his next marathon will be labeled as a debut again.

Oh Snap, that means that Bad Wiggins is going to have to really work hard to justify Choge as the GOAT distance runner.

Jonathan Gault wrote:

The women's race set the record for most sub-2:19s (4), most sub-2:20s (5), most sub-2:21s (7), and most sub-2:23s (9).

There were also 30 men under 2:12. THIRTY! I don't have a good way of checking, but surely that is a record. Does anyone know for sure?

Not sure how reliable these lists are but according to ARRS the previous record seems to be 22 in Frankfurt 2011.

How are there this many Vaporfly apologists!? Is it just the desire to argue? Or to feel better about your own PBs run in Vaporflys? The shoes clearly are a huge difference (see research, race results, etc) and it matters due to sponsorship obligations limiting access for pros. People aren’t on an even playing field AND we don’t have apples to apples record comparisons anymore. Rojo fights a lot of lame fights, but he’s totally right here.

rojo wrote:

He’s one of the GOATs of all time

Seriously...?

Eyeroll wrote:

How are there this many Vaporfly apologists!? Is it just the desire to argue? Or to feel better about your own PBs run in Vaporflys? The shoes clearly are a huge difference (see research, race results, etc) and it matters due to sponsorship obligations limiting access for pros. People aren’t on an even playing field AND we don’t have apples to apples record comparisons anymore. Rojo fights a lot of lame fights, but he’s totally right here.

Ssshhhh Princess.

Lightweight, amazing cushion = fast times. It’s literally not rocket science.

Technology moves on. So should you guys.