Different biomechanics in the 800m vs 10,000m.
Different systems used.
Give a higher % back in the 10K as there's more variability in lap times leading to more potential for improvement, whereas in the 800m the max/min lap times have a much lower range therefore cannot be improved on as much. I.e. there's more of a limit on performance improvement in the 800m due to its nature, 1st or 2nd lap cannot be improved on that much whereas in the 10K 1st-25th lap can be improved on more.
Biomechanics deteriorate more in the 10K
The biggest benefits seem to be from stride length improvements. This may confer more of an advantage in the 10K as stride length may alter more significantly than in the 800m during the latter stages of the race and in general. Stride length will be less in the 10K and therefore maybe more potential for improvement.
You couldn't do the above suggestion in the above post because it's not race-specific, distance-specific. The suggestion would be able to show if super shoes or super spikes made an improvement but it wouldn't be relevant to race pace or race distance which is what the researcher wants to look at presumably (faster speeds/time trials). The researcher wants to see why race distance makes a difference to the % improvement. So race pace and race distance needs to be studied/compared specifically.
Results also indicate that over a 1500m race, our participants would take 17 to 21
steps less in super spikes as compared to traditional spikes
The more aerobic the event is (i.e. 10km, marathon), performance mainly depends on the rate of metabolic energy consumption, running economy. Whereas for sprinting and less so the 800m (but obviously it's more of a factor than in the 10k) it's more about acceleration and top speed, which may not have the potential for the same % improvement.
So it's distance specific.
I think it comes down to this: metabolic benefits are speed-specific, related to biomechanical differences between speeds.