Records are being broken - is it ALL shoes?

No doubt shoes have played a big part in improvements across the board. I do think that there are other factors at play. In this day & age, you know how your times stack up nationally. You're not going to local meets anymore if you're a top athlete. You're traveling to the best meet, with the fastest athletes, on the fastest track, & your race might even have pacers or pros in it. I don't know how to quantify group think mentality but it's like shooting for the OTQ at CIM. The course is fast & you have fast shoes on but you also hop on a train & are surrounded by dozens of others trying to do the same thing. If you run under 4:05 in the mile, you sign up for your next race at BU. There's something to that imo. & I think that might even be a better story line than runner puts on shoes & gets faster. NCAA athletes also benefit from being older, & not having to peak as much last year. That has probably helped with development.

Grant Fisher is raw talent. He goes from playing soccer and switching to running and bam....instantly fast and sub 4 miler in HS. Just raw talent.  Mix that with plenty of mileage in college and pro years and you're seeing his potential being realized now. His form is also very economical.

We are seeing such great times because those kids who, in the past, did other sports and had tons of talent are choosing running. If all the kids in HS did just running instead of soccer, football, lacrosse, etc... you'd have dozens of kids like Grant Fisher. The untapped talent pool is huge in the US.

You people acknowledge that super shoes are having an effect on recent performances, but you don't (are you unable to?) DESCRIBE WHY AND HOW.

I will ask this as simply as I can - does the super shoe slingshot/propel you along?

You are not being charged by the word, so be expansive.

Also, time drop (similar to name drop) your best times in both traditional AND super shoes.

All we get are these lame "I improved by 4.077%". Or "I improved by 67 seconds". That tells us nothing.

Oh, and when was the last time you raced in traditional shoes.

Lets get some hard stats on here.

I think you’re all working for the shoe companies. All things being the same at the BU 5k, I’d put good money down that the worst Fisher would have run was 12:55 in “pre” Dragonfly spikes.

as others have already said, the biggest impact of the super shoes is in the reduced impact on legs, allowing athletes to run more high intensity workouts than they would have before. This is most true for the marathon, but still probably has a small effect on the indoor track.

So the science of the shoe (the engineering of the shoe) (the physics of the shoe) has no bearing. You are saying that the shoes DON'T propel you along. They just ease your legs.

Nuguse wears super shoes. ND has been spray painting over the Nike logo on the Dragonfly's since last year

El G wasn’t built like Arnold you goof. If you think your Brits were clean, you’re delusional.

Beaslescomb was wearing Dragonflys and Hobbs was running in New Balance super shoes last year so…

Kessler was in dragonflys last year.

What if the spikes improved times in the mile by 1 second? How many typically were between 4:00 and 4:01. You'd probably double the sub 4's if the spikes accounted for even a two second drop, since a lot more are between 4 and 4:02 than between, say, 3:58 and 4 usually. But don't discount the possibility that the extra COVID eligibility plus more time-chasing meets account for the additional sub 4's and sub 8's, or at least some of them.

It's 95% new undetectable drugs and 5% shoes.   

Otherwise Komen and El G could have through on super spikes and run 3:39 and 7:12.  Not possible for a human.

There's a new undetectable drug that people now have access to, and its driving these insane performances.  This is the new late 90s era of unmitigated doped running.  No one wants to admit it, but its true.

I. Also think recovery time is a great contributing factor. Bekele's record fell after the lockdo n just like Dibaba's.

Then Ayana's fell too (twice) and we all thought it is as untouchable.

Jusy my thoughts..

This is being brought up in multiple super spike threads, but I don't see why a 3:47 in super spikes for Gregorek would be any more unbelievable than the performances we are seeing. Is this to diss Gregorek? People do have outlier performances (Wheating...). I mean, 3:50 is amazing as is, and he did it without superspikes. It's not like he would be on Alan Webb's tail if both were in the same spikes. Yes, I think ElG might be 3:40 and Webb 3:43 in super spikes. Why not?

Make that about 3:44 for Webb, subtracting 3 from 3:46.91 and rounding to the nearest second. Even if you say 2 seconds per mile, that could be 3:44.9 or "3:44" in vernacular. I think LR's analysis coming up with about 3 seconds per mile seems reasonable, as well as @dslfje2's in this thread for the 5000/10000 showing maybe more for the longer distances in the super spikes. Of course, I'm not against seeing a more in depth analysis and coming to a better consensus. I do expect that we'll see a wave of incredible times run this summer, just has we have already seen it last summer, and this discussion will no doubt be revisited in the future.

Remember that just because Webb ran 3:46 in non-super spikes doesn't mean that we will see an avalanche of 3:44 miles in super spikes. The last time someone ran faster than Webb's 3:46.91 was 1999 (El Guerrouj and Ngeny).

its a combination of drug cocktails, the shoes,a small amount of science and nutrition and very corrupt sports systems that turn a blind eye,or even encourage drug use.Doping has also made its way down to lower levels because so many people have a win at all costs mentality.Records mean more promotion,and more money,as well as prestige.Younger athletes are also doping.Sprinters are much more densely muscled and bulkier than they were in the 70s and 80s,you see masculinization with women,and scrawny,yet densely muscled mid and long distance athletes are running insane times. Expect to see a lot of retired athletes dying young in the future.

When I last checked, it was your legs that propelled you along - unless you have motorized shoes.

Again, let’s take the 2015 M1500m list (which admittedly, was a fast year, but still, point stands). Analyzing actual times and then applying a super spike (“ss”) conversion factor of 1.5 to 3s.

Actual ss1.5s ss3.0

1. Kiprop 3:26.69 3:25.19 3:23.69
2. Makhloufi 3:28.75 3:27.25 3:25.25
3. Iguider 3:28.79 3:27.79 3:25.79
4. Farah 3:28.93 3:27.43 3:25.79
5. Willis 3:29.66 3:28.16 3:26.66
6. Managoi 3:29.67 3:28.17 3:26.67
7. Biwott 3:30.10 3:28.60 3:27.10
8. Kiplagat 3:30.12 3:28.62 3:27.12
9. Souleiman 3:30.18 3:28.68 3:27.18
10. Wote 3:20.29 3:28.79 3:27.29

Since we now have these conversions as a benchmark, I’ll wait until see I see a year end list that looks like this before I say super spikes have had an impact.

supershoes allow more training as they are not that heavy on the legs as normal shoes