Oleg Strijakov Masters Winner at Boston Is a Spira Shoe Guy

That's why the shoes produced prior to 1980 were better in my opinion: rubber not EVA or any supertech foam derivative.

Intellectual dishonesty in advertising? That's never been done. Again, I am not praising them, but it looks like the route they are taking rivals that of JG. Both are creative and appeal to the masses with a product that is really nothing new.

You might want to read this.

Thanks for that, David.

As a bit of a jaded bastard, let me admit that this:

"But in a brief written statement, USATF confirmed today that the shoes aren't banned: "Because of pending litigation, USATF cannot comment on Spira shoes beyond confirming that USATF has not examined or 'banned' the shoe, as we have publicly stated multiple times over the last year-plus," wrote USATF spokesperson, Jill Geer, in an e-mail message."

reads like the USATF side working the press to make a case for the civil suit that no damages have been done.

I have a vague recollection that we talked about these shoes being banned at Boston last year also. It's hard to believe (but possible) that the idea was cooked up back then by Spira too. Was it?

Can anyone link me to one of the instances where USATF has publicly disavowed the ban "multiple times in the last year"?

I hate to be skeptical (well, OK, I don't - it's in my nature), but I feel like we've been fed a whole lot of disinformation about this story, and given the pending lawsuit, suspect that maybe both sides have been keeping us in the dark and feeding us shit.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

I'm curious about the Spira technology, and I have to admit that I'm intrigued by the concept of more energy-efficient cushioning.

In any mechanical system with a mass and a spring, motion can be influenced and/or controlled by a damper. But to provide damping force, energy must be transferred into the damping medium. For example, in the case of your car, the mass of the vehicle is sprung above the road. When the car passes over a bump, the impact puts energy into the spring/mass system. Without "shocks" (more properly called dampers), most of the energy will come right back out of the system, and the mass will continue to bounce on down the road. We've all had a car like that at one time or another, with worn-out dampers. But with good dampers on the suspension, the motion is controlled to a desired amount, the bump is "absorbed" and the ride is cushioned. But nothing is free. This cushioning happens at the expense of energy absorbed into the working fluid (oil) located inside the poorly named "shock absorber". It manifests itself in the form of heat. The oil gets hotter and hotter as more and more bumps are encountered. This heat didn't come for free; rather it is a very indirect byproduct of the engine output, which came from fuel.

Back to running. In some ways a runner is a very complex spring-mass system. There is a lot that I don't understand about the spring characteristics of the leg muscles. But I am quite sure that most of the damping needed to control the motion of the runner's body comes from muscular control within the calf and quads. I believe that this consumes the lion's share of the damping energy that is required.

But there is also some damping effect provided by the shoe midsole. If this damping effect (not spring effect) is very large, then waste heat should be generated within the midsole, and some of your energy will be lost to your shoe.

By creating a shoe with springs but very little damping, Spira is attempting to eliminate or greatly reduce the energy lost to heat within the midsole. Think of the car with no dampers (shocks).

I don't know whether the change in the amount of energy lost is significant to performance or not. I think if it were, then a traditional pair of shoes should get unbearably hot over a lengthy run, and the Spira should stay cool.

Your thoughts?

After yesteray's thread with people upset with how the press handled the Virginia Tech press conference and one poster saying the press is vultures, I wonder if the corporate press often is just a shill for some of the companies they cover after wathinc the video supplied by TXrunnergirl:

http://video.msn.com/v/us/fv/fv.htm??g=d0fca501-1253-4df7-9421-fcc4ded93739&f=34&fg=rss

I have a hard time believing that this piece wasn't planned out in advance. Two guys run the Boston marathon in yellow shoes (which contrary to the piece above is not that unusual), the shoe name is never mentioned on the tv broadcast, never zoomed in on, and yet boom just a few hours later, there is CNBC having a piece on the great successful marketing of the shoe, how they stole the show from Nike, with the CEO being interviewed and some marketing expert talking about how great a job at marketing it was. Without the CNBC piece 99% of the public would not have know what shoe was being worn especially since the singlets said FootSolutions (couldn't CNBC just as easily done the piece on FootSolutions? They got more publicity than Spira on the broadcast because there name was visible)

Not to mention that today I received an email from someone who wishes to remain anonymous who was in contact with the Foot Solutions runners who led Boston for the first half of the race and he was told they 'had' to go Boston for publicity reasons (the implication being not to finish the race) and were not happy about it.

Please use some of your trust fund to hire a ghostwriter.

wejo, why dont you start talking about something more reasonable? the shoes are fine ,their strategy worked because fools like you have been naming and talking about them since race day.

you are doing exactly what they wanted you to do! you fool!

this has been done by every major shoe company in the world, dont kid yourself.