Wold Athletics' new shoe rules are out. Vaporflys stay, but as of 4/30, shoe must be out for 4 months to use in competition

Real Lyfe Nobodee wrote:

On a more serious note, what is the definition of "professional athlete"? I barely hit the OTQ in the marathon. Can I line up against these guys in their own company's shoe that they can't even wear yet? Or, if I get an elite entry, am I considered part of the pro field even though I'm not sponsored by a shoe company? This could get weird. Now a bunch of people around me are not going to ask for elite bibs, pay for their own, then line up behind the elites so they can wear certain shoes. Geesh. This is a mess.

I wondered the same thing. I'm slower than you, but do make it into the elite field of some races as an elite master. Frankly, I'm gonna follow the rules anyway - just how I'm wired. But I wonder if they apply to me.

This goes to a broader point - I really think races should make runners declare whether they are competitive or recreational. If you want any sort of age group or overall award, you declare yourself a competitor. And then you comply with the drug rules, the shoe rules, the headphone rules, the no outside assistance rules.

Or... identify as recreational, and have fun.

I like this excerpt from the LR article..

5) Which means that, after years of pros getting to race in unreleased prototypes, the best shoe technology in the field could now be on the feet of amateurs.

Imagine: Nike introduces its latest update to the Vaporfly — let’s call it the 6% — on October 1. Any non-elite runner could use those shoes at the New York City Marathon — but reigning champion Geoffrey Kamworor would have to wait another three months.

Likewise, if Nike does end up releasing its current version of the Alphafly (we’d expect them to modify it to make it eligible under the new rules), that would be legal for weekend warriors but not for the fastest runners in the world.

I don't see what the problem with this is. Going forward, it would be easy enough to time the release of new shoes so they're available by whatever racing season is coming up.

Nike makes the Alphafly compliant, puts it on sale May 1. Kipchoge and others train with it all summer and it's eligible for competition on Sept 1st, in time for Berlin. etc.

I’m sure that if you were entered in an elite field in a race, you would be have to abide by the shoe rules. No one cares if the guy in 10,342nd place in some marathon wears a shoe that hasn’t been out for four months (except maybe the guy in 10,343rd place, lol). But for the elite runners? You would have to be in compliance. And I would also assume that an athlete who wins prize money at a race would be DQ’d if they wear an illegal shoe or prototype (except for maybe at a small town race with an clueless race director where the top finishers get 25 bucks or something like that).

Real Lyfe Nobodee wrote:

On a more serious note, what is the definition of "professional athlete"? I barely hit the OTQ in the marathon. Can I line up against these guys in their own company's shoe that they can't even wear yet? Or, if I get an elite entry, am I considered part of the pro field even though I'm not sponsored by a shoe company? This could get weird. Now a bunch of people around me are not going to ask for elite bibs, pay for their own, then line up behind the elites so they can wear certain shoes. Geesh. This is a mess.

Simple solution- to get prize money, your shoes have to be legal under World Athletics rules. The race would effectively have two divisions- legal shoe, and non-legal shoe. No problem.

What does this mean for spikes or general racing shoes that are modded? Nike has done that for years (the cut plate on the miler back in the mid 2000s), swapping out plates for some shoes (Vaporfly with the tumbo plate). What does this mean on this end? My buddies and I have done it for some of my vintage spikes (Kennedy on a zoom speed sole), and a couple Instragram guys actually do commissioned projects for others.

Simple solution- to get prize money, your shoes have to be legal under World Athletics rules. The race would effectively have two divisions- legal shoe, and non-legal shoe. No problem.[/quote]

I don't think that totally solves the problem. Imagine a road race where the prize money goes 10 deep, but some of the spots are occupied by people in the illegal shoe division. Sure, they could be removed from the results, but it's awkward and affects race tactics (if someone comes up on you late in a race, do you want to have to assess their shoes to decide if it's necessary to try to hold them off?). Furthermore, this puts some kind of burden on race officials to make judgments about shoes, pay attention to who's wearing what, etc.

Malemute wrote:

Real Lyfe Nobodee wrote:

On a more serious note, what is the definition of "professional athlete"? I barely hit the OTQ in the marathon. Can I line up against these guys in their own company's shoe that they can't even wear yet? Or, if I get an elite entry, am I considered part of the pro field even though I'm not sponsored by a shoe company? This could get weird. Now a bunch of people around me are not going to ask for elite bibs, pay for their own, then line up behind the elites so they can wear certain shoes. Geesh. This is a mess.

Simple solution- to get prize money, your shoes have to be legal under World Athletics rules. The race would effectively have two divisions- legal shoe, and non-legal shoe. No problem.

I would certainly agree with this. It just creates a whole other conversation defining professional. Then we have issues, like Boston 2018, when non-elite women athletes are in the money, even though they got to draft off of males the entire way in a different wave. It would surely be a sticky situation if someone got in the money wearing prototypes. But honestly, I think that should be up to the athlete. Just know, that if you have a good day and you happen to be in the money, you're going home empty handed. Kind of puts the ball in the sub-elite athletes' court. But we would have to clearly define it beforehand. That's what I'm hoping for - a more clear definition.

Another point: beyond prize money, does this only apply at WC and Oly competitions? Major road races? At what point is this rule required to be held? Can I win my local turkey trot in prototypes and take $50 cash?

I am probably overthinking this at this point. But I do have an opportunity to wear some prototypes at the trials, so this rule made me a bit nervous when I saw the headline. Or I could stick with the Hoka Carbon X, which I qualified in. Looks like we are all set for trials, but it creates a separate conversation for competitions to follow.

The only way to enforce this rule is to require top athletes to turn over their shoes after each race so that they can be cut open verified that only one carbon plate is in the shoe. So maybe I don't want to let you cut open my $250 shoes to find out. Will I be DQ'd for the suspicion of cheating unless I let you destroy my shoes? This is a total mess.

There's certainly other ways like x-ray, ultrasonics, etc. But in general: yes, shoe examinations would be required

It is a complete mess. It exposes the rot at the heart of the type of rapacious capitalism practiced by Nike (win-win-win, worry about crap like fairness a few years down the road). It also says a little about the athletes who wear them. Granted, there are plenty of innocent-enough reasons for athletes to adopt the new technology (keeping up with your fellow pros, or your sponsor/team provides them, or you just didn't think about it all that much), but I think there are also plenty of amateur athletes who made a poor choice. They are all too willing to pay $250 to shave a few seconds/minutes off their times and beat a few local competitors they wouldn't otherwise beat, when deep inside they know the improvement isn't real.

I, for one, am very proud that I ran sub 3 in regular shoes. I always thought my competitors are silly to shell out $250 just to shave off one or a couple minutes. This feels like vindication, although I know they can still run in the Vaporflys/Next, at least officially it's recognized there needs to be some limit to this stupid game.

Purity McPhair wrote:

It is a complete mess. It exposes the rot at the heart of the type of rapacious capitalism practiced by Nike (win-win-win, worry about crap like fairness a few years down the road).

There really is a lack of objectivity going on. We live in a time of picking a side and then screaming as loud as possible that “the other side is wrong and evil”. The age of Trump. There is nothing inherently wrong with innovation in sports equipment. The exact opposite. In all sports innovation is a highly sought after thing. Look at tennis rackets, golf clubs, hockey sticks etc. The examples are endless and innovation has drastically changed the level of sport.

All shoe companies should continue to strive to make a better running shoe. That’s good. As a company, they should also absolutely want to make a better shoe than other companies. That is also good. It’s ok to want to limit aspects of what a shoe can do - specifically not wanting a spring - and that’s fine if you can prove Nike shoes have created a spring, but trying to stifle innovation and a company wanting to make the best shoe possible is just ignorance and stupidity.

old hobby jogging fart wrote:

There's certainly other ways like x-ray, ultrasonics, etc. But in general: yes, shoe examinations would be required

It's not that hard. They inspect engines after car races, bikes after cycling events, radio controlled cars after nerd R/C championships, golf clubs, baseball bats, air pressure in footballs, etc.

The top three cross the line, put their shoes on the table while they are doing their post-race drug test, and anyone who knows anything about shoes will be able to tell within five seconds if they're legal or not.

Or, as already written in the IAAF rulebook.. if Joe Blow crosses the line in Alphaflys that are visibly questionable, the race marshall and/or a competitor can file a protest to have the shoes inspected.

I think innovation is good in some (probably most) situations. However, running - and probably every other sport - has an essence that doesn't need to be "improved upon". Take chess (okay, it's not really a sport in the traditional sense, but still...). It's fine if companies want to come up with really neat chess pieces carved from jade, or virtual chess boards that you can click a button on your keychain and make appear. But at the same time, you wouldn't want to have companies that make chess pieces that warn the owner that they are in a precarious situation, or whatever. The point being, we want the actual essence of chess to remain unchanged. When you play a game of chess, it's just you and your brain and your experience against your opponent.

And competitive running is (or should be) similar. Ideally, a bunch of competitors line up, and the best competitor wins. Shoes should be an afterthought. And the beauty of it is that times a competitor runs today can be compared with times run 50 years in the past or future (or 1000 years for that matter), if we stick to a reasonable set of rules about equipment. The new Nike shoes are a threat to that set-up.

Look at track surfaces. Sure, modern tracks are an improvement for the most part, but somebody or bodies had the sense to put limits on how much of an effect they can have. Would you really want constant innovation in track surfaces, with tracks being adjusted to return more and more energy to the runner (or less, if that is what works for a certain event)?

So I say, let Nike and other companies innovate all they like with their TRAINING shoes (and watches and HR monitors or whatever). I'd love a more comfortable ride that prevents injuries. But when people do battle in races, they should be stripped down to basics, all possible equipment advantages stripped away. Just you, your heart and lungs and guts, against your opponents'.

This rule is disappointing since the 40mm limit is arbitrary and subjective. It's no better than Bloomberg's ban of large sodas.

Would have preferred to see an objective rule based on what's considered a shoe.

Which leads to a question, in a very Plato theory-of-the-forms philosophical sense, "what is a shoe?"

If a shoe is a covering for the foot meant to protect the foot, then innovation in foam, comfort, weight, etc. do not really change what a shoe is; there is room for improvement in shoe technology that allow humans to run further, faster with more comfort, less injury, etc.

It would not seem that stack height, whether a shoe has 35mm or 45mm, fundamentally changes a shoe into not being a shoe.

But, does adding a spring change a shoe into something that's not a shoe?

Adding wheels to a shoe makes a shoe into a roller blade. According to these rules, can we wear roller blades in marathons, so long as they've been on the market for 4 months and don't have a stack height of more than 40mm? Of course not! A roller blade is not a running shoe.

So, the question I pose is, does adding carbon plates and spring technology fundamentally change a shoe into something that is not a shoe? Does this addition transform a shoe from a protective foot cover into something of a propulsion technology?

That seems like an objective standard upon which to make rules.

I wonder if its permissible under WA's rules to swap out a runner's insole - or if doing so means it's no longer a standard-issue shoe available to the public.

This could disadvantage those running with orthotics - particularly as WA considers the insole or insert part of the stack height:

"The Sole and the Heel

5.5

...The thickness of the sole shall be measured when the shoe is not being

worn, at the centre of the forefoot and the centre of the heal as the distance

between the inside top side and the outside under side that contacts the ground,

including the above-mentioned features and also including any kind or form of loose

inner sole or other appliance or insert...

Inserts and Additions to the Shoe

5.6

Athletes may not use any appliance, either inside or outside the shoe, which will have

the effect of increasing the thickness of the sole above the permitted maximum..."

But, does adding a spring change a shoe into something that's not a shoe?

I'm also not absolutely happy with the direction the Vaporfly is taking this sport, but generally any shoe acts as a spring. Some do this better, some worse.

To make things truly equal for the given era at least, everyone would have to either run in the exact same shoe model, or barefoot

Yes! I agree. Barefoot (for racing anyway) should be the ideal. Is it going to happen? Probably not. But I feel that competitive running should proceed under the principal that barefoot running is the ideal, and any type of shoe worn in competition should stick as close to being non-beneficial (outside of protecting the foot) as possible.

Training shoes, on the other hand, are a different matter.

So will Kosgei’s WR finally be ratified? It’s been a while now.