Super Shoe Adjusted All Time Lists

But pacing light would surely help and I think 10k is long enough for super spikes to be beneficial.

Btw, I remember Canova once said his 10k WR was actually a bit on the weaker side for him. It should've been 26:05, and that's without superspikes and pacing light.

While the conversion is still absurd, I would say in a perfect race a sub-26 possible for the prime Bekele with pacing light and superspikes. It's just that a perfect race almost never comes by.(though pacing light would definitely help with the odds of getting that)

12:28, on the other hand, is dreamland.

Yeah, your conversion lines up pretty well with mine. I think at a high level, it's probably between right around 1.5-2s/mile, with the variability coming from event (mile vs 10k), and some people responding more than others. That'd be 4.5-6s for a 5k. I've been meaning to do an actual statistical analysis for a while now, and this thread might be my motivation lol.

Times now are on average faster than that 6s number (iirc), but I think that's due to non-Africans training better. There was a very long stretch of time (90s-2000s) where Africans dominated everything from the mile on up. It wasn't until the late 2000s/early 2010s that the US had any hope of being competitive at distance events from anyone besides Lagat, who we got from Africa (Teg, Webb, Rupp, Solinsky, Hall, Ritz, Manzano, Centro). If the shoes were just making everyone a bit faster, we'd expect Africans to still absolutely dominate distance events, just in a slightly faster time, but at the last WCs, Africans only won 1 silver medal between the 1500 and 5k. Oceania, Europe, and the Americas are now far more competitive than they used to be, and since everyone has access to the shoes, the difference can't be coming from those. In distance events at last WCs, Norway got a gold, silver, and bronze, Guatemala got a bronze, and Great Britain got a gold. At indoor worlds, GB got a gold, the US got 2 silvers and a bronze, and New Zealand got a gold. That didn't used to happen. If you go from 2-3 countries making up most of the medals, to a dozen countries making up medals, you'd expect times to come down, which they have.

That comes with the assumption that the WRs for the late 90s/early 2000s were doped though. If they weren't, I don't see how the best athletes in the world today aren't running significantly faster than the WR. Until 2020, Komen, Geb, and Bekele were the only guys to go under 12:40, and they all did it within a span of like 8 years. There's no way that in the last 20 years, Cheptegei is the only guy who's come along that could run that fast (and if it's 6s, he'd have still been a 12:40s guy back then). I think you have to accept that either they were doping, or the shoes don't make that much of a difference. I prefer the latter because it makes the sport more fun for myself, but I know most people here think that the shoes do make you way faster and that those guys were doping.

My issue with the shoe talk is that people constantly equate "People are 10s faster than they used to be" with "People are only running 10s faster because of the shoes". If you want to say that 12:55 is the new 13:05, because that indicates an equal level of competitiveness, then I think it's a useful metric for old people who consider 13:05 to be fast. But it shouldn't be used as the reason that times are so fast now. Even without the shoes, we'd be seeing significantly faster races today than we did 10 years ago.

You’re making estimates with absolutely nothing to support them. No matter what Canova said, Bekele could not have run 26:05, and sub-26:00 is ridiculous.

Well Geb and Bekele were much more prolific and dominant runners than Cheptegei in their era. I don't think that's much of a question. They won at a higher rate, and their times were consistently separated from the field at a larger level. Komen was that way in the 3K/2mile only, but now we see Jakob has blown away a record of his. Perhaps in Oslo, we'll get more of a World Record attempt, and the times will come down even more. Anyhow, it doesn't really faze me to think Komen/Geb/Bekele were more like 12:31-33 guys in superspikes. Also, Cheptegei ran his 12:35 in hot conditions and probably had a couple of seconds faster if it wasn't hot and humid. There's a gap between them in their prime and the likes of Barega, Cheptegei, Kejelcha, Kiplimo and Aregawi in the 5,000. These guys are more equivalent to Kipchoge on the track at 5,000 and he correspondingly has a 12:46 PB (conversion 12:40 in superspikes).

The most generational athlete right now is Jakob. Thus with the superspikes he is resetting the record books at 2 mile and running standout 1500/mile despite imperfect time trials last year (mile ~ windy and leading a lot of the race, 1500 ~ didn't go with pacemaker the whole way).

Cheptegei has the two world records, but you don't see the huge gap you might expect. He's definitely a cut above in 10K championship races, so I don't mean to disrespect what he's done. The answer is not saying 9s in the 5000, it is to acknowledge 5-6s, and as you say also appreciate that instead of just fast Ethiopians and Kenyans, we now have more competitive runners from Uganda, the USA and Norway amongst others. We don't have to pretend that Solinsky/Ritz were better than they were. They were in a slightly shallower era and with a 5-6s adjustment they'd still be better than the likes of Teare, Woody and so on.

No. The US just wised up(asterisk).

once again, if the shoes don’t work, prove it. Any US runner is open to running a race without them. Oh, but that would mean putting on one of those uncomfortable pair of spikes from 2019.

This is a terrible argument that I see all the time. Nobody is arguing that they are not an advancement. They are simply not 2.5% better over 5k. That is a ridiculous claim.

I didn't see anyone saying that US runners should be forced to run in Nike Jasaris to "prove" that Nike Victories weren't a major advancement.

Again, even if the dragonflies are only 0.01% better than Victories, EVERYONE would switch. Why would you use old models? This argument is garbage.

Agreed. Maybe a second per mile for the track max. Beyond that seems really speculative and just sounds like people trying to make their era sound faster than it was.

You don’t seem to have much experience with numbers. A .01% improvement, would be about a tenth of a second for a 10000m.

He had “super feet”

They say for a 10k is a second per lap

I have always said this - I really wish that "superspikes" (spikes with slightly more foam because it's less dense) had its own "era" that didn't coincide with 1) wavelight and 2) a pretty obvious shift in training philosophy for events 1500m and up.

The problem is the overlap because quite simply it makes it impossible to land on one figure for any of these factors and therefore there is no way to quantify how any combination or permutation of them impact any one individual athlete.

The nuance is almost infinite.

Pros absolutely benefit more from wavelight - far more. You only have to look at the insane comparison in numbers from Bekeles WR's to Cheptegeis in terms of lap splits to figure that out. Look at how much more efficiently a modern 1500m is paced compared to 20 years ago - the days of 53.0/57.0/56.0 are gone for good.

College kids absolutely benefit more from the spikes primarily because they don't have wavelight unless they are really lucky, and they do because very few of them either know or have the resources to look after their bodies the way a pro does. So yeah - if your fatigue and recovery time from a workout is being reduced by X % because you are wearing better cushioned product then of course that's going to compound over time and you will be better.

On the other hand what is the impact of better training principles like more "at threshold" running vs more "past threshold" running like was the norm 20 years ago? What impact is there from the global standard just being higher and that higher standard just organically lifting the kids who aspire to one day be there as well?

Anyone that thinks they can land on a number taking all of this (and much more) into account is simply dreaming. If we had a 4 year stretch where the only variable improved was spikes then okay - let's do a deep statistical analysis, but we simply were never afforded that luxury. All of this is pure conjecture without a lot of solid basis. Sorry.

Barega ran 12:43 before super shoes. 6s gets him down to Bekele's WR, and 9s gets him below Cheptegei's. Since super shoes came out, he's run under 12:50 once (12:49 in 2020).

I think there is certainly a gap between peak Geb/Komen/Bekele and Barega/Kejelcha/Cheptegei/Kiplimo/Aregawi. Kejelcha ran 12:46 pre-super shoes and has now run 12:41, so his progression lines up pretty well with my 4.5-6s. Gebrhiwet went from 12:45 to 12:42. I agree that with the shoes there's a very good chance Bekele/Geb would've been sub-12:35.

But my contention is that if we got Geb/Komen/Bekele to run sub-12:40 in the 7 years between between 1997-2004, then in the 20 years since then (almost 3x as long), we should have had ONE person capable of doing it WITHOUT super shoes. Really more like 8-10, given other advancements made in that time (unless you think those 3 were full throttle doping, in which case it makes perfect sense why no ones been able to touch those times). Alas we have only had 1 person do it with supershoes. Really these couple posts have made me think the conversion is probably closer to 1s per mile, at least once you start getting to 3:30/12:50 level performances.

The true outliers do not come with some arbitrary regularity. Since Bekeles reign, Ethiopia has simply not produced as good/dominant a runner. They’ve had very good ones (Gebremeskel, Edris, Hagos, Yomif). But these guys are all in a tight pack closer to Sileshi Sihine than Bekele/Geb. Barega looked like he might buck the trend and he may yet, but he has plateaued a little bit since 2021. I wouldn’t put much stock in his slow 5k record of late as he just wasn’t on-form most of 2022-3. We can probably expect a 12:40 type time in Oslo based on the LAGP win, 7:25i and 57:50 HM.

I agree with a lot of your post, but a couple points:

I've seen a lot of people (I think maybe Waskom after he made the team last year mentioned it) say that college kids have better resources than a lot of pros. A track, maybe an indoor track, physical therapists, weights, crosstraining machines, and plenty more all for free on campus. I remember BTC athletes (pre-Eugene move) saying they didn't even have a track, they'd just run around a gravel loop. In places like Flagstaff, NAU can kick you out at any time (and you're only allowed to be there at all by the grace of Mike Smith). OAC works out on a high school track I'm pretty sure, and have to get permission to use Colorado's indoor track. I say all that because today, the kids at NAU and UW (maybe Oregon too) have some of the best coaching and facilities/resources in the world. It sounds like athlete's mindsets are also shifting to train more like professionals.

And to harp on the mental aspect for a second, the deluge of fast times from HS/college kids has a ton to do with the mental aspect imo. At the highest level, I assume every athlete has already maxed out their mental game unless proven otherwise (like Nuguse indoors getting silver the way he did). At a high school/college level though, I think mental barriers are MASSIVE. In the 60s kids had no issue running sub-4, and kids have no issue with it now (in the sense that we don't go 30+ years between them). If a kid wants to be the best and they have to run 4:02 to be the best, then they shoot for 4:02. If they have to run 3:55, they shoot for 3:55.

And I agree with your point about there being too many variables to do a very good statistical analysis. My issue with the shoe talk is that people will put the entire (or near enough) difference in times due to shoes. I think it's worth comparing pre-2020 and post-2020 like you'd compare any era, but you can't take one athlete from one era and say with any certainty what they'd run. With guys like Bekele, I think you can definitely say he'd have been a few seconds faster in super shoes, just like you could say Bikila would've been under 2:08 in super shoes, or Ryun would have been under 3:30 in super shoes. But it's complete conjecture once you start saying Bikila would've run 2:01, or Ryun would've run 3:26.

Bob Beamon is a true outlier. You can't expect that to happen with any regularity.

Geb and Komen were racing each other at their peak, and Bekele was entering his peak as Geb was leaving his. They all ran within 2s of each other. That's not what I'd call a true outlier. Particularly since you yourself said Komen's specialty was the 3k.

I actually think the "piechart" of performance benefits, one second a mile at the elite level is a solid hypothesis - more so for the 5000m and 10000m but I'm fine with that for the mile.

"Superspikes" are all about impact fatigue reduction. Yes the foams have resiliency - all foams do, but the energy loss difference between a highly resilient foam and a not-so-resilient foam on an already elastic track surface is really minute. So the more times you "impact" a track surface during a race, the more benefit you get during a race.

So it's not linear in that respect. I actually think it's more like a cumulative half second over 1500m, an average 1.0 second per mile over 5000m and an average 1.5 a mile over 10000m - so it nets out on average at your 1.0/mile number across all events.

Everything else comes from a combination of better race execution and shifted training philosophy (especially with respect to reaching maximum performance ceiling in terms of time).

What's your point? I would always choose the spikes that give me a tenth of a second improvement over 10k compared to the default. Would you not? Why would you use a slower spike?

In reality, we do not know what the percentage improvements actually are. But I would bet a lot of money that it is at least an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE less than 2.5% (or 2.25% or whatever the conversion in this thread is).

I agree with actually all of that. You should harp on about the mental side - I think it's a massive, massive part of it and there is far more room to run figuratively speaking at the college level than the pro level and I am in full agreement. When I said the spikes matter more for college kids than pro's I didn't mean to the tune of multiple seconds a mile. I just meant that college kids will benefit more in a relative sense because these new products definitely help soften the negative impacts of over-use and over-training that we tend to see more in fired up, eager college kids than in the pro ranks.

It's a similar logic when people get into the debate about ability across eras in certain sports. As you allude to, it's hard to penalize an NBA player at the top of his game in 60's for being not as objectively good as an NBA player at the top of his game in the 00's if you put them side by side.

When it was a big deal to be a 3.55 miler in the US back in the early 2000's it was conversely seen as a big deal to be a 4.00 miler at college. Now the level has shifted to 3.50/3.55 so the relative difference is still the same. The level of aspiration changes with the ability of the best and that progresses the sport.

So, maybe it's more special vs. outlier then. If drugs were the overwhelming force you'd think it'd be pretty even playing field for Kenyans and Ethiopians in the EPO era. Right now there are 5 Ethiopians who can run 12:40-12:45 (Yomif, Barega, Aregawi, Gebrhiwet, Haile Bekele). There are 2 Ugandans in that range. 2 Kenyans likely (Kipkorir, Krop). Jakob is in that range and so is Fisher. That's 11 guys in pretty close congestion in 1 timefram. Perhaps Cheptegei once had a little more separation than now.
What about in the late 90s-2019. There is Bekele (12:37) Komen (12:39), Geb (12:39) and then the dropoff to Kipchoge (12:46), Sihine (12:47), Songok (12:48), Shaheen (12:48) and then Gebremeskel, Gebrhiwet etc. coming later.

So three guys and a 7s gap to the rest of the field over 20+ years. That is testament to these guys being special. I'm not really buying that only 3 guys had access to drugs OR Ethiopian and Kenya's depth is leaps and bounds better now.