We like to have 1 thread per topic so we merged two threads together and kept the title of this thread. The other thread was entitled, "Assefa performance."
Explain what external energy is being provided by the shoes
None. That’s not what it’s about.
It’s about the fact that they are less lossy. Do you understand the concept of damping?
Think of trying to bounce off the floor and over a desk first a superball, then a hacky sack. That is an extreme example, but understand that energy is conserved within the system and available to perform mechanical work, rather than being lost to the surrounding environment.
I have no doubt that shoes could make a difference, if a runner adapted to and used them advantageously, and if they were optimized for their general operating environment.
Make no mistake what we saw was drugs, but yes shoes could make some difference. If used improperly or not optimized, that could be a negative difference.
That's exactly what I was saying. I know how energy return and loss works.
The point is there are many previous improvements of shoes that have done exactly that, the carbon plate just does it better. My argument 'for' these shoes is that all the energy comes from the runner.
The training/recovery effect is also moot. The same can be said about running 160km/wk barefoot vs the cheapest running shoe. This is what shoes have always done.
So my contention is that the performance effect of these shoes is not that great. What it may have provided in a quite different way (without being conspitorial about it), is to provide an 'excuse' for performace shift that may be due to other aids.
Testing her blood and urine post race is meaningless. Unless her handlers are idiots, whatever she may have used would be long out of her system by the time she toed the starting line. I watched the full race last night. What helped to make her performance unbelievable is how she kept getting faster and faster throughout the race. She was ahead of WR pace at halfway and she continued to accelerate! She wasn't straining/struggleing at the end either. After cutting over 2 minutes off and setting a PR by nearly 4 minutes??!! Come on!! This just does not pass the believability test. Goes from 2:34 to 2:11 in 3 marathons after not racing in 2020-21, and being a former 800 meter runner.
Yes, it was HOW she did it.
Just…kept…going…faster
Watched it properly last night. I am even more astounded now.
40km 2:05:13, 41km 2:08:16 (3:03), 42.195km 2:11:52 (3:36) , couldn't see the 42km sign for that last 200m split.
This is from someone that ran track, didn't advance out of rounds at OG, took break, then decided "I will do the marathon"...absolutely no progression through the distances that was required by Kipchoge, Bekele and everyone else that quick. First 'real' marathon 2:15, next one 2:11:52
If this is what she has done in this short space of time then it means she is likely still on the up, with big improvements possible.
Watched it properly last night. I am even more astounded now.
40km 2:05:13, 41km 2:08:16 (3:03), 42.195km 2:11:52 (3:36) , couldn't see the 42km sign for that last 200m split.
Just to add, the only time I have seen someone finish in this way was Wanjiru at Chicago for a 2:05, and that was with the duel of Merga and with Wanjiru having an excellent junior career and previous HM WR
Here is how the date is switched from Dec to Mar and vice versa in Ethiopia
Born: December 4, 1997. (let us say).
December 4 is November 25 in Ethiopia. So in Ethiopia the birth date would be recorded as 25-3-1990 because the day is written first, and the month is 3 because November is the third month of the Ethiopian year which starts on September 11. And in November, the day is 9 days behind the Gregorian calendar so Nov 25+9 days = Dec 4. And the year is minus seven until January.
Simply writing 25-3-1990 would be interpreted as March 5, 1990 in Europe (day first). So somebody made a mistake by forgetting to translate the day/month. A later correction would replace the March birthdate with the December date.
I seem to recall that the Ethiopian calendar has 13 months.
Watched it properly last night. I am even more astounded now.
40km 2:05:13, 41km 2:08:16 (3:03), 42.195km 2:11:52 (3:36) , couldn't see the 42km sign for that last 200m split.
Just to add, the only time I have seen someone finish in this way was Wanjiru at Chicago for a 2:05, and that was with the duel of Merga and with Wanjiru having an excellent junior career and previous HM WR
...I'll throw in the Opera House
Correction, that was the duel with Kebede, one of the most epic finishes ever. For comparison, Wanjiru closed last 2.2km in 6:34, Asseffa just 6:39 with no one chasing her and no reason to go any faster.
There were multiple doping threads on Gudaf Tsegay the other day that were deleted by the mods very quickly. Why is Gudaf Tsegay protected but this thread stays up?
Just to add, the only time I have seen someone finish in this way was Wanjiru at Chicago for a 2:05, and that was with the duel of Merga and with Wanjiru having an excellent junior career and previous HM WR
...I'll throw in the Opera House
Correction, that was the duel with Kebede, one of the most epic finishes ever. For comparison, Wanjiru closed last 2.2km in 6:34, Asseffa just 6:39 with no one chasing her and no reason to go any faster.
...hell, I'll even throw the whole of Sydney :-)
She makes seven yellow jerseys look like a rather minor achievement.
Watched it properly last night. I am even more astounded now.
I regretted for decades not having the original broadcast of 2006 London with Kastor going sub-2:20 (in terrible 2006 eva shoes!) and had searched in vain for years for a high quality copy (the "secret" was it was rainy that day and the cooling effect really helped for that extra percent which she never duplicated after)
So this time I knew to save the original 1080p 60fps broadcast and not the less re-encodes posted to youtube (even the flotrack re-post is poorly done and interlaced)
It's not obvious when it's a blur at lower resolutions but Assefa is working HARD
She is also drafting the pacer so hard she almost steps on him several times.
It's also the flattest, fastest WMM
And we still don't have any other data points for the shoes and what they can do.
All the people so sure she is doping then show studies with 3-5% gains
So what they are really saying is she is definitely a sub-2:20 athlete.
Armstrong had a whole army of people protecting him and covering from him and ignoring or throwing away tests, he was jetting around to private labs for extensive blood doping.
But absolutely no-one is going to "protect" a poor Ethiopian unknown woman, so if she really did dope we are going to know sooner or later.
How about we wait and see what happens before we accuse her?
Let's see what happens with all the other races this year and next with those shoes, if CR and WR set with vaporfly still go down further.
Personally I don't think it's the classical doping people are used to.
I think there are new drugs and supplements used to radically reduce inflammation.
This allows elites to train even more miles, faster, for bigger gains.
It's still against the spirit of the rules but very difficult if not impossible to detect unless WADA has something new for 2024 Olympic testing.
There were multiple doping threads on Gudaf Tsegay the other day that were deleted by the mods very quickly. Why is Gudaf Tsegay protected but this thread stays up?
Watched it properly last night. I am even more astounded now.
So this time I knew to save the original 1080p 60fps broadcast and not the less re-encodes posted to youtube (even the flotrack re-post is poorly done and interlaced)
It's not obvious when it's a blur at lower resolutions but Assefa is working HARD
She is also drafting the pacer so hard she almost steps on him several times.
I watched it a couple of times, maybe you need better resolution. For sure she has a fluid style, but she is barely puffing at 3:05's fro 40km , then kicks down further
I watched it a couple of times, maybe you need better resolution. For sure she has a fluid style, but she is barely puffing at 3:05's fro 40km , then kicks down further
Look the short simple answer is if she is cheating there is no way she is going to get away with it and we probably won't have to wait long either because they have her testing from last year's 2:15 and if this isn't natural it sure isn't "micro dosing" or stopped months ago - so we just have to wait
I genuinely don't know what to believe but my default setting is not "they are doping".
This is not a defense, just thoughts about possibilities.
The long answer is like ALL elite Ethiopians she was born and raised at an altitude that would look DOWN to Boulder by a couple thousand feet. Elites don't "huff and puff" until they go past their ventilatory threshold, not their lactate threshold. Kipchoge sure doesn't
She does start to breathe harder when she accidentally steps outside of the pacer though.
Certainly no-one believes she could go sub 2:15 in a women only race where all pacers are gone by 20 miles. There is absolutely no way she could have done this without a tight draft 99% of the way. Brigid Kosgei too. Heck Paula Radcliffe did too in 2003 until the very final turn.
Her entire head is shaking in "maximum effort" though, that's a dead giveaway. She is just really good at upper/lower body isolation. Go look at the comparison when she is running around Jared Ward, she is clearly working much much harder than him and at her limit.
Finishing kick means nothing, how many sprint finishes have we seen with men at the end of a sub 2:05 marathon? Think about the insane splits at the end of NYC by Mary Keitany on the hardest WMM course.
She also lost 17 pounds from that 2:34 to that 2:15, that's huge.
We still have no clue what these new adidas super-shoes do, we need more marathons.
On the right athlete vaporfly is +2 VDOT, the alphafly is +3 VDOT, what if the the adidas is +4 VDOT? The foam destructs after 30-40 miles so it must have massive energy return at the expense of self-preservation.
Her performance was VDOT 77 but a 2:18 is VDOT 73 so we just have to piece together all the missing pieces.
Another way of looking at vaporflys is they let you glue together two of your best non-supershoe half-marathons because you now stay below lactate threshold double the distance.
So a question is could she run 1:06 for a half in old-school adios, which we'll never know.
I bet she would have bonked at 5:00 flat, it averaged 5:02 for a reason.
Anyway by the time the US Olympic Trials are over, we'll know if it's the shoes or something else.
By the way there are no Adidas sponsored American women in the top 10 US marathons, if that changes, we'll also know it's the shoes.
I watched it a couple of times, maybe you need better resolution. For sure she has a fluid style, but she is barely puffing at 3:05's fro 40km , then kicks down further
Look the short simple answer is if she is cheating there is no way she is going to get away with it and we probably won't have to wait long either because they have her testing from last year's 2:15 and if this isn't natural it sure isn't "micro dosing" or stopped months ago - so we just have to wait
I genuinely don't know what to believe but my default setting is not "they are doping".
This is not a defense, just thoughts about possibilities.
The long answer is like ALL elite Ethiopians she was born and raised at an altitude that would look DOWN to Boulder by a couple thousand feet. Elites don't "huff and puff" until they go past their ventilatory threshold, not their lactate threshold. Kipchoge sure doesn't
She does start to breathe harder when she accidentally steps outside of the pacer though.
Certainly no-one believes she could go sub 2:15 in a women only race where all pacers are gone by 20 miles. There is absolutely no way she could have done this without a tight draft 99% of the way. Brigid Kosgei too. Heck Paula Radcliffe did too in 2003 until the very final turn.
Her entire head is shaking in "maximum effort" though, that's a dead giveaway. She is just really good at upper/lower body isolation. Go look at the comparison when she is running around Jared Ward, she is clearly working much much harder than him and at her limit.
Finishing kick means nothing, how many sprint finishes have we seen with men at the end of a sub 2:05 marathon? Think about the insane splits at the end of NYC by Mary Keitany on the hardest WMM course.
She also lost 17 pounds from that 2:34 to that 2:15, that's huge.
We still have no clue what these new adidas super-shoes do, we need more marathons.
On the right athlete vaporfly is +2 VDOT, the alphafly is +3 VDOT, what if the the adidas is +4 VDOT? The foam destructs after 30-40 miles so it must have massive energy return at the expense of self-preservation.
Her performance was VDOT 77 but a 2:18 is VDOT 73 so we just have to piece together all the missing pieces.
Another way of looking at vaporflys is they let you glue together two of your best non-supershoe half-marathons because you now stay below lactate threshold double the distance.
So a question is could she run 1:06 for a half in old-school adios, which we'll never know.
I bet she would have bonked at 5:00 flat, it averaged 5:02 for a reason.
Anyway by the time the US Olympic Trials are over, we'll know if it's the shoes or something else.
By the way there are no Adidas sponsored American women in the top 10 US marathons, if that changes, we'll also know it's the shoes.
She's had the benefit of doping all year for several years now without worrying about getting caught and knowing exactly when she is racing and when she needs to come off the cycle. That means a hell of a lot of improvement from heavy training loads and quick recovery. Clearly she already had speed so there's your answer. She will only get caught if she's very careless or if there is some bigger raid on her team and they find the drugs. But you are all welcome to continue living in the rainbows with the unicorns.
There were multiple doping threads on Gudaf Tsegay the other day that were deleted by the mods very quickly. Why is Gudaf Tsegay protected but this thread stays up?
Look the short simple answer is if she is cheating there is no way she is going to get away with it and we probably won't have to wait long either because they have her testing from last year's 2:15 and if this isn't natural it sure isn't "micro dosing" or stopped months ago - so we just have to wait
I genuinely don't know what to believe but my default setting is not "they are doping".
This is not a defense, just thoughts about possibilities.
The long answer is like ALL elite Ethiopians she was born and raised at an altitude that would look DOWN to Boulder by a couple thousand feet. Elites don't "huff and puff" until they go past their ventilatory threshold, not their lactate threshold. Kipchoge sure doesn't
She does start to breathe harder when she accidentally steps outside of the pacer though.
Certainly no-one believes she could go sub 2:15 in a women only race where all pacers are gone by 20 miles. There is absolutely no way she could have done this without a tight draft 99% of the way. Brigid Kosgei too. Heck Paula Radcliffe did too in 2003 until the very final turn.
Her entire head is shaking in "maximum effort" though, that's a dead giveaway. She is just really good at upper/lower body isolation. Go look at the comparison when she is running around Jared Ward, she is clearly working much much harder than him and at her limit.
Finishing kick means nothing, how many sprint finishes have we seen with men at the end of a sub 2:05 marathon? Think about the insane splits at the end of NYC by Mary Keitany on the hardest WMM course.
She also lost 17 pounds from that 2:34 to that 2:15, that's huge.
We still have no clue what these new adidas super-shoes do, we need more marathons.
On the right athlete vaporfly is +2 VDOT, the alphafly is +3 VDOT, what if the the adidas is +4 VDOT? The foam destructs after 30-40 miles so it must have massive energy return at the expense of self-preservation.
Her performance was VDOT 77 but a 2:18 is VDOT 73 so we just have to piece together all the missing pieces.
Another way of looking at vaporflys is they let you glue together two of your best non-supershoe half-marathons because you now stay below lactate threshold double the distance.
So a question is could she run 1:06 for a half in old-school adios, which we'll never know.
I bet she would have bonked at 5:00 flat, it averaged 5:02 for a reason.
Anyway by the time the US Olympic Trials are over, we'll know if it's the shoes or something else.
By the way there are no Adidas sponsored American women in the top 10 US marathons, if that changes, we'll also know it's the shoes.
She's had the benefit of doping all year for several years now without worrying about getting caught and knowing exactly when she is racing and when she needs to come off the cycle. That means a hell of a lot of improvement from heavy training loads and quick recovery. Clearly she already had speed so there's your answer. She will only get caught if she's very careless or if there is some bigger raid on her team and they find the drugs. But you are all welcome to continue living in the rainbows with the unicorns.
Athletics has just become too bizarre.Im not surprised people have lost interest in it,or stopped competing.
Yeah, it’s just a complete joke now. Unfortunately, it’s made ‘elite’ road running completely unwatchable for me now. The Africans turn up massively doped, dominate the top 10, go home with their new cars and cash to buy houses..Get popped a year or two later (who cares? They got the car and house and never have to give it back). They’re still massively better off than if they hadn’t doped enormously since being teenagers. No one cares! All the incentives and none of the disincentives to play by the normal rules. It’s completely destroying the sport.
It's not about drugs. It's about running economy. There is no drug that makes you more energy efficient.
Yeah, it’s just a complete joke now. Unfortunately, it’s made ‘elite’ road running completely unwatchable for me now. The Africans turn up massively doped, dominate the top 10, go home with their new cars and cash to buy houses..Get popped a year or two later (who cares? They got the car and house and never have to give it back). They’re still massively better off than if they hadn’t doped enormously since being teenagers. No one cares! All the incentives and none of the disincentives to play by the normal rules. It’s completely destroying the sport.
It's not about drugs. It's about running economy. There is no drug that makes you more energy efficient.
If you don't fatigue that's even better. And that's what drugs can do.
WR times are being run with alarming frequency. Is this natural progression or the the influence of drugs and supershoes?
It's inconclusive regarding foot wear. One-hundred meters to 800m, both genders cannot improve their performances.
Drugs? What drugs? I suspect graft & corruption in T&F at the highest level. I suspect there are some, "Too Big to Fail" athletes.
I don't place T Assefa in "Too Big to Fail" category. Why would S Coe fall on his sword for her?
I look at this in the same way I look at male one mile progression. From late 1930s, we had a handful of 1:46.xx & 1:47.xx 800m men. By the time we got to dozens of sub-1:49 800m men, sub-4 mile was going to occur.
For close to 60 years, men have been racing sub-2:12 Marathon. Most men in 2:11:30 to 2:12 Marathon range are men with one mile personal best in (4:05 to 4:20) range. We have about 25 women with sub-3:56 1500m. There are 6 women with outdoor sub-4:15 one mile (five of the six are also sub-3:56 1500m women). Not every woman with sub-4:15 1 mile ability is going to race sub-2:12 Marathon. Not every male with sub-4:15 one mile ability is going to race sub-2:12 Marathon. If there are enough women who could beat Bill Rogers & Dick Beardsley in 1 mile, some of the same women who could defeat Rogers and Beardsley, 1 mile are going to be able to race close to Rogers' & Beardsley's Marathon times.
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