The nonsense of the rule regarding racing shoes not allowed on track

Renato Canova wrote:

So, for an athlete running 14 or 15 or 16 minutes in 5000m with racing shoes, nothing changes : the performance is not good enough for reaching some limit in any important competition, and the goal of the athlete is to beat his PB, that in any case can be valid under statistical side. So, road runners continue to run on track with their "illegal" racing shoes, now "legal" for statistic reason only. Do you think this is a clear rule ?

Exactly, that rule is stupid just for that reason.

So, now we will see local all-commerce 5 or 10k on the track and anyone wearing over 25mm shoes should have an asterisk next to his/her name? Is such a result counting as PR? According to this rule, it's illegal to do that.

And also it's crazy that after that rule is out but yet people still run in 40mm shoes on the track to qualify for OT and their results count?!

I'm the perfect example of what Renato is talking about...

I'm exclusively a road runner and never train in spikes. But I'll be racing a track 5,000 in a few weeks. In preparation for this race, I did a track workout in spikes for the first time and it destroyed my calves.

So what should I do now... Race the 5,000 in a shoe that might injure me? Or wear a shoe that's technically illegal on the track?

It’s pretty obvious that Adida$ lobbied hard for the IAAF rule to be put in place. Does it come as any surprise that adidas waited for their carbon plated shoe to come out, and that it has 39mm stack height in the heel?

It’s only a matter of time until this stupid rule gets changed, or Nike starts making their carbon plated shoes with 39mm in the heel... I would expext the rule to be changed.

It doesn’t make any sense other than to specifically keep vaporfly’s or alphafly’s off track.

IAAF and adidas have long been in business together.

The people making the decisions are not runners.

NottaTrackGuy wrote:

I'm the perfect example of what Renato is talking about...

I'm exclusively a road runner and never train in spikes. But I'll be racing a track 5,000 in a few weeks. In preparation for this race, I did a track workout in spikes for the first time and it destroyed my calves.

So what should I do now... Race the 5,000 in a shoe that might injure me? Or wear a shoe that's technically illegal on the track?

But this is the problem that you and Renato seem to be missing. You SHOULD be doing training in spikes (or whatever is apt) if you will end up racing on a track, not whining about your calves being shot. This is the advantage/disadvantage. Not bending everything to help certain people.

If they provide no advantage, why are you so butt hurt about your athletes not being able to use them?

Les wrote:

need more information wrote:

But didn't they first set a different rule for track allowing the 40mm road shoes, but spiked shoes had a lower limit? And then changed it to 25mm for both spiked and unspiked? How did the first version leave any more room for spike development as the new one - it only affected dedicated road runners like Moen?

No, I believe last year there were no thickness rules, so it was legal to use road shoes on the track. That was changed when World Athletics set limits for road and track shoes thicknesses.

The original rule had 30mm limitation for spiked shoes:

"For a shoe with spikes, an additional plate (to the plate mentioned above) or other mechanism is permitted, but only for the purpose of attaching the spikes to the sole, and the sole must be no thicker than 30mm."

They could have changed it to 25mm and have the same spikes we have now, and keep allowing road shoes for those who want to use them.

The Dark Passenger wrote:

Renato Canova wrote:

and Rhonex Kipruto used Adidas (illegal for track with the new rule, but legal last year) in his WR of 10 km.

That is incorrect Coach - Kipruto used Adidas Takumi Sen for his 10k WR, perfectly legal then and now. It runs very low to the ground with a stack of 6mm

+1 Very good argument against Canova's opinion!

Well...... wrote:

NottaTrackGuy wrote:

I'm the perfect example of what Renato is talking about...

I'm exclusively a road runner and never train in spikes. But I'll be racing a track 5,000 in a few weeks. In preparation for this race, I did a track workout in spikes for the first time and it destroyed my calves.

So what should I do now... Race the 5,000 in a shoe that might injure me? Or wear a shoe that's technically illegal on the track?

But this is the problem that you and Renato seem to be missing. You SHOULD be doing training in spikes (or whatever is apt) if you will end up racing on a track, not whining about your calves being shot. This is the advantage/disadvantage. Not bending everything to help certain people.

People that usually trains and races on roads may run a couple of races/year on the track; there is really no reason for them to do training in spikes just for a couple of races that are not even the focus of their season, in particular given that it takes quite a bit of time to get used to spikes and the risk of injury is high. It make a lot of sense for this people to just race in the road shoes they are used to, and it is unclear to me why they are banned, given that I tend to agree that they would not provide any particular advantage on the track. I believe that the sport must try to be inclusive, not just exclude people for random reasons.

Race it in whatever you would race a road 5k in. If I ran a track race tomorrow I'd wear a flat that had less than 25mm heel height and far less than 40. I don't own a spiked shoe (and perhaps shockingly, didn't in high school) but don't feel I'm limited in the least by the rule. Do you not have any road racing flats?

hard to say it but have to say it wrote:

Race it in whatever you would race a road 5k in. If I ran a track race tomorrow I'd wear a flat that had less than 25mm heel height and far less than 40. I don't own a spiked shoe (and perhaps shockingly, didn't in high school) but don't feel I'm limited in the least by the rule. Do you not have any road racing flats?

I would race a road 5k in the Vaporfly Next%

I also have the NB 5280 and the Reebok Floatride Pro. Both are great racing flats, so those might be good options.

Renato, the fact that athletes chose certain shoes doesn't convince me that they're faster. And it's better to be preemptive than responsive.

What if athletes are allowed to wear the bouncyfly on the track. Say they do start picking the bouncyfly instead of the spikeyfly, and then they start breaking world records in the track with the bouncyfly. Maybe bouncyfly technology improves a bit in the interim. At what point do we ban them and ask athletes to stick to the spikes?

If the argument is that spikes risk injury to athletes, I think it would be fine to allow track shoes without spikes to have slightly higher heels than those with spikes, as long as the forefoot height stays the same. This would seem to solve Renato's problem without adding bounce to the shoe, right?

The simple solution to all of this rubbish is to ban the carbon springs which are ruining the sport.

Also, I know good (not elite... think 15 minute 5k types) that can run faster on the track in vaporfly shoes than spikes. These guys finish just behind the elite women in big road races

Why do we think spikes are faster? Scientifically proven?

Spikes are and have always (IMHO) been detrimental to the overall popularity of the sport of track running.

Therefore carbon shoes might be the best thing that has ever happended to it!

Way too few people, of all ages including veterans, are taking up competing on the track if they didn't already run competitely when they were young. Trying spikes, buying spikes and running in spikes as an adult is still less common than taking up running marathons was seventy years ago.

And the percentage of injured among the few and the brave that do - are sky high!

Not so with carbon shoes it seems. We might need a whole new international federation if this isn't understood, and soon. Go carbon shoes! Boot the luddits in charge!

Sorry David, but your thesis is not validated by FACTS.

In 2019, all the validated shoes for road races were allowed for athletes running on track. This means every athlete had the opportunity to compete with the shoes that enabled for them the best result.

With this clear picture, ALL THE ATHLETES running 5000m and 10000m in WCh in Doha used spikes, the only one with Vaporfly was Sondre Moen.

Do you think everybody was so idiot to chose shoes not allowing the best personal result ?

Another important consideration : if the athletes of 5000m probably didn't have experience with racing shoes (with some exception only), the athletes of 10000m had BIG EXPERIENCE with racing shoes, because previously were able to run on the road WR of 15 km (Cheptegei), HM in 59' (Kejelcha) and WR of 10 km (Rhonex Kipruto). This for speaking about the 3 athletes winning medals.

You can ask me : if spikes are better, why Sondre ran with Vaporfly without spikes ?

Already I answered that question several times : Sondre had some year ago a surgery under one foot, that forced him to stop running for more than one year. After the surgery, he's not able to use spikes for long time, because if his heel can't touch the track, the tendon is stretched too much and after the maximum time of 15 minutes the calf becomes step by step more sore, risking the breaking of some muscle fiber.

This year, he was informed 3 days only before his attempt against the European Record of One Hour that the shoes (Vaporfly) were no longer permitted, WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT. Of course, he had no time for adapting to the new rule, and, having a contract with Nike, in any case could'nt have any racing shoes inside the limit, because Nike didn't have any show without spikes corrisponding to the new rule. And, for better explaining what happened, his manager and the Federation of Norway sent a letter to World Athletics specifying the reasons he could not use spikes for the duration of one hour, AND NOBODY OF WORLD ATHLETICS REPLIED TO HIM, HIS MANAGER AND THE NORVEGIAN FEDERATION, which was a big lack opf education.

But the problem is not what happened to Sondre, this is the past. The current problem (and there is no more Nike alone, but practically many Companies) is that the most part of road runners in the World always train themselves with shoes without spikes, normally with a thickness higher than 25mm (so not legal according the rule), and in a normal season without Covid can run 15-20 times on the road and maybe 1-2 times on track, so never use spikes in training BECAUSE THEIR SPECIALISM IS ON THE ROAD.

This happened in US and in Japan, but NEVER with the best runners, because all the specialists of track of course train and run with spikes, WELL KNOWING THAT CAN ALLOW ATHLETES, SPECIFICALLY TRAINED, TO BETTER PERFORM.

If we could go back in time to when spikes were first invented/implemented large scale on track - isn't it a rather safe bet to say that they themselves gave runners at least 1% better traction/grip on the track than any kind of shoes that existed before them?

My point is that leaps in athletic technology have happened before (and will almost certainly happen again) so the T&F precedence for allowing carbon shoes already exist (regardless if they are beneficial or not to better times, which in such case is a totally different discussion).

The ONLY way to nullify the sport would be to stop counting times and performances made in shoes and go back to counting barefoot running as the only real and equal form of running.

There are four different ways of swiming, four different ways of downhill skiing, two different ways of norcis sking, four different ways of global racket sports, at least six disciplines in gymnastics, etc, etc, etc. Only running is still stuck in this horrible nostalgia hallucination of an olden time with total technological equality between everyone, everywhere and always.

Don`t come here and whine Renato! If the rules don`t suit Sondre just forget about track for him.

The problem is easy solved ! Just stay with the roads!