What shoe were the Americans wearing in Chicago?

NERunner053 wrote:

I would be curious to get a more exact answer on how much the shoes help. I would be more in this camp than with rojo. Some of it is marketing and now we just honestly don't know how much help they provide. Nike has created the perfect situation where you feel like you need to wear them or you're missing out.

Exactly my thoughts. Nike has to be loving this. And runners will always be left wondering "what if", if they aren't using them. I've been bouncing back and forth since 2017 and everytime I use Vaporflys, I don't see an advantage. Despite all that, I am still left wondering. It's ridiculous.

I'd like to see Lelisa Desisa sign with adidas, or another African who is at the top, just to see what difference it makes.

In the American running scene, where everyone is at 2:10~2:12 pretty much, the shoe choice is all over the map and it doesn't seem to matter. Currently in 2019, the two fastest times have come in Hokas and Saucony. And not a ton slower (if any) than what Galen Rupp did at Boston either.

Wait till Atlanta when you have 150 Americans all running in various shoes. That will be interesting.

OldSchoolLetsRunner wrote:

I bet if you look at the last 10 majors and took the top 10 in every one, 7 of 10 were wearing the same shoe. Most likely because they were sponsored by Nike and all the elites of one brand wear, generally speaking, the same shoe.

Not saying the Vaporflys don't offer an advantage. Just saying that because many in the top 10 wore them doesn't sound fishy to me.

Also, most of those guys should be running 2:10-2:11. US men's marathoning continues to lag the world and those are not otherworldly times when you have a woman running 2:14 and the conditions were about as perfect as they could be.

I agree with this guy. Unremarkable that the Nike-sponsored are Nike-shod. Before this, they wore something else with a swoosh. There even was a period when stars wore another Nike even though the carbon thing existed already. Bekele won Berlin in something else. So did a women's winner in Berlin who's name slips me (she was in this year's Berlin which is what reminded me of that). Some people may have thought the women's winner in the WC marathon wore some version of it, and it may have been, but if you payed attention when the camera showed the bottom of the shoe, it was not the one on RW, where they also show the bottom.

What's different real recently, it seems, is that they now tell there sponsored superstars they HAVE TO wear a certain one. Look at the quote of the day. She wasn't all that hot on it but her agent told here that was part of the deal. Look at all the pacers in the INEOS thing. All the exact same shoe. The star wore something else - there may be only 1 or 2 pair of those in existence - but all the Nike minions HAD to wear the shoe they're trying to sell.

So if you catapult enough $$ into the sport that you sponsor so many of the main contenders AND you sponsor certain races, not inviting those at the very top wearing a competing brand, assuring the winner will be wearing yours AND they all are contractually obligated to wear a certain shoe, that might seem to prove it's by far the best shoe out there. But it might just prove that they really want you, the public and the consumers, to think so.

So, like the poster I quoted, it's hard to tell whether they are actually good or they simply sponsor Kipchoge etal and therefore everything amazing is done in them. If Reebok had the right 20 runners on their payroll and insisted they all wore a brand new purple shoe, wouldn't it seem like that shoe is all the rage? I mean, every marathon is won in a pair. Unsponsored guys would all wear it right? They'd feel like they had to. Is it marketing or is it actually good? Kipchoge himself doesn't wear the one they're trying to sell, that should tell you something.

FFF wrote:

Rojo, check out the Ironman finish from last weekend. The winner was wearing black Asics, and there are pretty good views of the shoe - not sure it's the plate one, but I'd assume so.

I believe Frodeno ran 2:42 this year. Compared to Patrick Lange in 2018 & 2017, 2:41 and 2:39, both in the New Balance Hanzo. Mark Allen ran a 2:40 in 1989 in some way less cool Nikes. I was hoping Lange would finish this year so I could see how he did in the adidas Adios. Sebastian Kienle ran in the New Balance shoe with the carbon plate in it.

I think in the sport of triathlon it's a mess since there are even more variables then there are in running.

I think it's unfair for people like Marcus to criticize these performances on the basis of the shoes. The Japanese have how many men running under 2:12 in the marathon? Around a hundred? There are probably two dozen plus women running equivalent performances. Most of those runners are using wafer-thin Asics and Mizuno shoes that do not resemble Vaporflys at all (Japanese flats have historically been a shoe category of their own).

While these Vaporflys have been shown to offer an improvement over economy/efficiency it's unrealistic to think that is the reason for huge jumps American athletes are seeing. I think more than anything people are finding training groups and working harder than ever to get into the 2:10-2:11 range. Better yet, we're seeing more collegiate runners skip the years and years of chasing 5K/10K times on the track and jumping onto the roads.

Americans are working their asses off to get to the level they should have been at a long time ago and I think we are finally seeing the hard work pay off.

Near-perfect conditions in Chicago of course helped.

I ran a 2:35 last spring without Vaporfly's last spring and a 2:36 in them this fall. Both were similar weather days but I was definitely more fit this time around. It's really a hard thing to quantify. I cramped up hard (maybe a fueling issue) and thought I'd be in the low-2:30s but it's not like I went out unreasonably fast. The marathon is still hard to get right. Maybe the shoes help a little but maybe I needed to get in some more carbs and I would have run better. It's not like I put the shoes on and went from 2:35 to 2:30. You still have to do the training & then navigate race day. We're taking something away from the marathon by only focusing on shoes.

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These times are not out of this world. Americans from the 1970s could still beat these times (on the guys side). I don’t see how it could be more than a minute or so. That would put the top Americans near 2:13 in 2017 shoes if it was around 2 minutes. That wouldn’t happen. It makes a lot more sense to say the top would be 2:11:xx guys. I should point out that Kimetto ran 2:03 in Chicago and the winner only ran high 2:05s today. Are you saying he would be 2:07 high without Vaporflies? Ritz ran 2:07:47 one year in Chicago and was absolutely annihilated by Kebede who ran mid 2:04s. The reality is that facts simply don’t support your assertion that the vaporflies help “multiple minutes.”

If almost all the americans ran in Vapofly and that still none of them were able to run sub 2:10, the shoes are clearly not magical, they are still far away from the international competition.

What happens to all the other racing shoes Nike have. Will people just purchase the vaporfly. If so they will be at the mercy of one product. When other companies catch up where will it leave them.

So based on this data does that mean that Lindsay Flanagan is the only one not to wear carbon fiber shoes?

Someone buy her some vapor fly’s for the trials! She might be a contender with some.

God damn hypocrites wrote:

Tuned indoor tracks (Harvard, BU, etc.) deliver a proven 2-3% improvement in speed (not abstract oxygen consumption). Should we ban those too?

Of course not. Everyone in the race gets to run on those tracks. Not everyone gets to run in Vaporflys (Vaporflies?)

Spot on, Frodeno admitted his Asics all black pair have a carbon fibre plate (same as Hall wore in Berlin) - it's such a new prototype, the logo is hand painted on (you can see deterioration in the paint. A Mizuno sponsored team also debuted a thicker looking all white prototype at the Izumo Ekiden. Even Li-Ning have a rip off pair 4% pair at this point, the only company who appear to be doing sweet FA - adidas (can't imagine they're taking a hard pass on plates, would be marketing suicide).

Asics:

https://triathlonmagazine.ca/feature/frodenos-fast-footwear/

Mizuno:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3ocsyrHUkw/

Sorry for lack of embedding, on phone.

How do we know the Vs didn’t mess up Hasay and Rupp?

That Mizuno looks a lot like the New Balance but I can't find a good picture of the one Hawkins wore at the World Champs Marathon.

****Brooks WAS working on this 28 years earlier. More closer to 31 years earlier (around 1988 or so). I was the developer of the first running shoes to incorporate spring plate technology (the original Brooks Beast and the GFS-100). We tested looked at different ways of layering the carbon fibers to produce more spring. We tested at Michigan State Univ performance labs. As I recall we did find lab benefits but I believe we were limited by material technology of the time. EVA foam was much stiffer and heavier as were the uppers, and those shoes were not nearly as responsive as the Nike product is now. The technology was in it's infancy and did not catch on commercially. Kudos to Nike (whom I also worked for in the 90's) for sticking with it and improving it. The 4% does everything we thought it could do back in the 80's when we pioneered it at Brooks.

God damn hypocrites wrote:

Tuned indoor tracks (Harvard, BU, etc.) deliver a proven 2-3% improvement in speed (not abstract oxygen consumption). Should we ban those too?

Never hear hockey players complaining about Tuuk blades which has made the game so incredibly faster in the last 35 years and the carbon sticks too .

XC and downhill skiers not complaining about new tech boots and parabola shaped skis .

Cycyclists not complaining about state of the art carbon framed bikes .

Golfers not complaining about 460cc clubfaced drivers .

How come the minimalists and bare footers don't chime in much .

Bring back Bikila and I may listen .

Funny how when Eliud won his first Berlin, the in-soles of his Nikes were coming apart and hindering. Didn't stop him winning then.

rojo wrote:

forcerunner wrote:

Stinson, Droddy, Shrader, Thweatt - All new version (close to production) of their new shoe. Jokingly nicknamed the "Quatro". New colorway white/gray and sole is changed. Parker wore his prototypes and the rest wore the most recent version.

Scott Smith - Carbon X

Brendan Gregg - Hyperion Elite

Estrada - New ASICS?

Emma Bates - New all blackout ASICS. Release sometime next year.

Bruce - Carbon Rocket

Flanagan - Nike Zoom Fly 3 (not 4%)

Would Rupp have a medal if he didn't have the shoes?

Would Greg

Lemond win the Tour de France without those new handlebars?

What was it called? wrote:

It took the big guys breaking the ice and paving the way. It's OK now. It wasn't 5 years ago. The ones who made it OK are going to have a head start. Fair? Read the rule again, but read the de facto rule between the lines. Is there one company that always seems to be on the cutting edge, or just one that gets to make the rules?

If Spira had come out with this technology and its athletes dominated the Olympic Marathon .

Take the most recent shot put at Worlds. Say they came up with some secret film they put on the exterior of the short and it flew through the air better. Only the top 3 guys had it. And they through 2% further as a result.

That would mean they through 1.5 feet further because of a film and the medals were determined because of the shot put. Now what if the maker of the film had a patent on it and the other shot put manufacturers couldn't match it and were trying to make their own film. Would this be fair?

No. The other athletes should be given access to the film.

The problem with shoes is there are a bunch of commercial interests involved. One solution could be that any shoe worn must be approved by IAAF and say commercially available for 6 months. Then athletes could decide if they want to run in it. But is that a fair solution as they might have to break their sponsorship contracts to run in a rival brands shoe.

In the past the shoe companies were making minor improves. Now we have a radical product with a radical transformation. 1-4% is radical at the elite level.

EssosLindi wrote:

If almost all the americans ran in Vapofly and that still none of them were able to run sub 2:10, the shoes are clearly not magical, they are still far away from the international competition.

A bunch of guys ran 2:10:XX and many of them weren't near 2:10X in the past. Yes Americans should be able to run 2:1X but if the shoes help you even 1 or 2 minutes that IS HUGE at this level.

The fact Mizuno guys from Atlanta Track club wore them is telling.