How come most elite runners wear shoes with 10mm drop?

Low drop runner wrote:

Forgot to address other two posters:

I ran in the A5 in the past, but they were so firm with little cushioning that I couldn’t imagine running a marathon on them.

For the LT4, does that have enough cushioning for a marathon? They seemed more like a 10k or half shoe.

I've run several marathons in the LT without any foot/calf issues. You'll also see a few elites racing in them.

I think they're fine as long as you run a bunch of longer efforts in them to get adapted. I only get about 300 miles before the forefoot cushioning gets too compressed, though.

Ho Hum wrote:

Low drop runner wrote:

Forgot to address other two posters:

I ran in the A5 in the past, but they were so firm with little cushioning that I couldn’t imagine running a marathon on them.

For the LT4, does that have enough cushioning for a marathon? They seemed more like a 10k or half shoe.

I've run several marathons in the LT without any foot/calf issues. You'll also see a few elites racing in them.

I think they're fine as long as you run a bunch of longer efforts in them to get adapted. I only get about 300 miles before the forefoot cushioning gets too compressed, though.

Great, I'll give them a try then, I always do my long tempo / marathon pace work in my race shoes anyway.

Train in whatever works best for you no matter the drop. However, be very careful switching suddenly from a higher drop shoe to a lower drop shoe while maintaining the same mileage. That can lead to injury.

BTW, the bigger cause of Achilles issues are tight and weak calf muscles, so you want to stretch and strengthen the calves. Switching to a lower drop shoe will aggravate the Achilles if you have tight or weak calves.