There is a lot of data showing that times have improved since the shoes. It may not be the ONLY factor, but the shoes ARE a factor.
Cheptegei -2 WRs in the shoes.
Multiple ARs in the shoes on HS tracks, Men & Women.
NCAA indoor qualifying times were 8s faster in 3k and 15s faster in 5k this year. Last year outdoors M 5k & 10k depth.
People don't want to believe that technology can have such an impact, but how many of us would attempt a PR on a dirt track in 70s spikes? Mondo tracks obsoleted the tracks before. The new shoes are making the old obsolete. It is not wrong or bad, but the 4min mile is not what it was a few years ago.
Number of US HS runners that broke 4 min in the mile in the 15 years following the introduction of synthetic tracks in the late 60s.
ZERO.
Fun follow up stat: # of times US HS runners broke 4 min on cinder tracks just prior to the introduction of synthetic.
Seven.
Another fun follow up stat: # of times Ryun crushed his own WR following the introduction of synthetic tracks.
Zero.
More stats: # of times Clarke completely decimated his own 5000 and 10000m WRs when synthetic tracks were introduced a few years following his WRs.
Zero.
More: Number of years it took for mile WR to be broken after synthetic was introduced.
Seven.
Another: Number of years it took for the 5000 and 10000m WR to be broke after synthetic was introduced.
Four.
Comparing synthetic tracks from the 70s, 80s, and 90s to cinder tracks of old is in no way, shape, or form relatable to comparing super shoes with shoes of even a few years ago. There has been no other comparable form of technology from the past to what we are currently seeing with the shoes.
The shoes and the tracks make them faster. They don't make them better. A sub-4 high school mile means less now.
Sure but it might be a bit like racing in heavy shoes vs light shoes in terms of result. I imagine Webb could have broken 4 in HS at Pre wearing heavy training shoes but maybe not by too much.
I sense there are a lot salty 4:04 milers here that are salty thinking they would be sub milers with dragonflies. Nope.
I'm honest with myself. I'm 38 and I ran all my Prs in Victories or Victory Elites. They wouldn't have been any faster if I had Dragonflies.
Well, I guess they aid recovery better and therefore you can do more quality sessions, but I don't think they actually make you directly run faster.
Source: I actually have a pair.
You're 38, super spikes can't fix what you've got. Wait until you're 50.
I'm not so sure it's about salty 4:04 guys. They'll always be 4:04 guys. Even if they speculate "what if I had super spikes", deep down they know that they didn't get there.
I think it's more of a feeling that the shoe companies are robbing the sport of its history. Times that were run by the legends of this sport are becoming sub-elite.
A sub-4 mile used to mean something. It's losing its meaning.
So, even taking your numbers at face value, he didn't "benefit[] about 1.5 seconds"; he benefitted no more than 0.46 seconds (1.48 - 1.02). And to reach this conclusion, you need to assume that he did not improve his training AT ALL in that year, and that there was nothing different about the 2020 race relative to the 2019 race, and any number of other confounding factors.
That doesn't make sense at all. His PR improved 1.48 seconds from 2019 to 2020 with the addition of superspikes. Whether it's all due to superspikes or also partly due to continued improvement in training is debatable. That debate is what the text in my post was setting forth arguments for. That math that you did to come up with no more than 0.46 second benefit makes no sense at all.
He used normal spikes in 2018 and 2019. The 1 second improvement in seasonal best from 2018 to 2019 I'd argue is still due to maturity/training. But he was clearly plateauing relative to the much bigger jumps in seen in previous seasons due to maturity/training going through the high school ages (17 seconds improvement to 6 seconds improvement to 2.5 seconds improvement to almost 9 seconds improvement to 1 second improvement, where I'd argue he had "arrived" to the highest level, certainly to medal contention in 2019).
He's a top Nike athlete, and superspikes became available in spring 2020, so I'm assuming his 2020 yearly best was superspiked enhanced relative to 2019 and earlier. His 2021 time is also superspiked enhanced. His 2020 and 2021 bests are essentially the same (0.36 seconds - accounting for noise is nothing, so I roughly averaged them and compared them to his non-superspiked 2019 time and came out with about 1.5 seconds. (1.71 if doing the actual math, but that would be giving that estimate more precision than it deserves, so I rounded it to 1.5).
I'm assuming a plateau in fitness and equating 2019, 2020, and 2021, since he was already 4th at Worlds (serious medal contender) in 2019, and the difference between that and 1st at the Olympics could be argued to be due to smaller things like how the races played out, randomness, and better consistency than his competitors rather than actually capable of running a faster time-trial time. Yet his 2020 and 2021 best times were 1.5-1.7 seconds faster than his 2019 time. What's up for debate: I'm assigning that 1.5-1.7 second improvement to superspikes. Someone else could argue that its 0 seconds to due to superspikes and 1.5-1.7 seconds due to improved fitness.
When you look at TFRRS for the NCAA, all of the throws events have gotten better in the past few years just like all of the running events. Wouldn't that disprove the idea that it's just the shoes making people faster since an event where there is no new advanced tech (that I'm aware of) has seen just as big of an improvement on depth?
The problem with saying this is that times for both individuals and the entire field don't progress robotically upwards There is stochastic variation. Superspikes were first out in limited quantities two years ago (Dragonfly spikes first mentioned here in April 2020) and have only been widely available for an entire season since last year. Yet people making your argument are suggesting that the world records should be destroyed the very same or next year in the 1500 (some WRs actually have been destroyed in the 5,000, 10,000). It doesn't work that way. You need to look over more years, and since you can't do that yet because the superspikes are so new, you need to look deeper into the results. In the absence of a technological breakthroughs, previous world records were not steadily broken by tenths of a second every year. There were wide variations in seasons bests in the 1500, and the world records would not be set every year. The current WR is from 1998! Even before that, there were three times since Elliot where there was 7 years between WRs. Looking at the past 15 years, the season's best men's time in the 1500 varied from 3:26.69 to 3:31.49. That would easily hide the benefit from superspikes if you just looked at the #1 performance in a season. Looking at the 20th fastest time in each of the past 15 years to get a 20-times deeper comparison, you can see that although there isn't really a trend line from 2007 to 2020, 2021 has the fastest 20th fastest time by 1.18 seconds better than the average from 2007 to 2020, and is 0.48 seconds faster than the next fastest year (2013). 3:34.09 (2007) 3:33.63 3:33.63 3:33.67 3:33.42 3:33.82 3:33.15 (2013) 3:33.47 3:34.13 3:34.09 3:34.17 3:34.38 3:33.21 3:34.98 3:32.67 (2021) Similarly, people asking why Jakob isn't running 3:26 yet have to realize that runners also don't progress robotically year to year, whether that's variation in fitness or variation in how the races place out. For example, look at the progression of two Jakes, that I just picked from near the top of current world rankings. Pick anyone else and you'll see yearly results are not only up in the beginning of a career and down at the end. There are ups and downs. Heyward. I see a regression from age 19 to 20-21, and then a big jump in 2021: 3:57.57 (2015, age 16) 3:46.50 3:42.12 3:36.90 3:39.38 3:39.04 3:32.82 (2021, age 22) Wightman. Regressed from age 20 to 21, massive improvement age 26 in 2020 presumably running in some of the earliest superspikes: 3:51.74 (2012, age 17) 3:43.74 3:35.49 3:40.05 3:36.64 3:34.17 3:33.96 3:31.87 3:29.47 3:33.48 (2021, age 27)
This is a great post, and deserves a bump.
Whether or not it fits people’s argument, here is some data. I expect this year will see a similar, and even faster, top 20. This will depend on Monaco, as always, which actually has a mile and not 1500 this year if I am not mistaken.
Good work zzzz.
Season's best is subject to too much noise. If you look at NCAA 1500m #50 time the past 2 years, it is clear that super shoes give roughly 2 seconds in the 1500m (at least at that level, maybe pros get less benefit)
Where are the girls? As far as I can see, no US HS girl has completed a 1 mile race this year.
Are there results out there? It's certainly been done in the past. I haven't seen one even in 10 minutes lately. Anyone have a link to a race in which an American high school girl finishes a race over exactly 1 mile sometime during this year's outdoor season?
Although I suppose I agree with this post - judging by what I see here on LRC, there don't seem to be any high school girls running the mile - I have another, related point. The fact that we're not seeing any mind-blowingly large group of girls destroying the record books would suggest shoes aren't doing much.
Let's break what could be called 'high school running' into 6 categories. Now, if shoes are dramatically speeding up times, we should, in theory, be seeing huge differences in performane compared to the past. Actually, those referring to 'the shoes' really mean specifically the Nike Dragonfly, so keep that in mind. Let's look at these categories.
Girl's Sprints. No significant improvement over the pre-Dragonfly era.
Boy's Sprints. Some improvement over a few years ago, but not enough different runnners doing anything meaningful to suggest it's shoes. And by the way, the leading protagonist is not in Nikes.
Girl's Middle Distance. No significant or widespread difference compared to the pre-Dragonfly era.
Boy's Middle Distance. Very noticeable bump - enough that this and several other threads have been started about it. The last non-Nike sub-4, in which a NB shod runner beat an otherwise Nike-shod field, predates public availabilty of the Dragonfly - which is what the current wave is wearing.
Girls Long Distance. No significant difference compared to the pre-Dragonfly era.
Boys Long Distance. One result that improves upon a decades-old record, and he was indeed (unremarkably, given 99% of high school runnning is) in Nikes (Next%). However, not a single runner has broken a distance record in Dragonflies. Has Chapa's record been destroyed by a dozen kids this year? No one has been close. So, no Dragonfly-bump at all in this category.
This and many other threads focus on one of these 6 categories - the only one in which an army of Dragonfly-shod runners seem to be redefining norms. In the other 5, 'the shoes' seem to have no effect. So that's where I come down in this debate. There must be other factors.
I know little about the individual runners in question. I DO know that information about modern training theory is dispensed via the intern and specifically here on LRC. I also know that EPO is legal and easy to get for those with deep pockets. There are likely other things I'm not considering. Perhaps some cultural factor persuades middle-school-age kids to try the sport. I don't really know one way or the other.
However, if the Nike Dragonfly is changing everything, wouldn't we see 5k, 10k, and Steeple times showing that? Wouldn't Chapa's record be barely in the all-time top-10 by now? Wouldn't we see as many girls running amazing times as there are boys (there are, of course, some, but the ration of head-turning boys vs. girls this year is about 7:1)? If 'the shoes' help much, data would demonstrate that over a broader spectrum of runners - instead of only boy's high school mid-D.
Although I suppose I agree with this post - judging by what I see here on LRC, there don't seem to be any high school girls running the mile - I have another, related point. The fact that we're not seeing any mind-blowingly large group of girls destroying the record books would suggest shoes aren't doing much.
Let's break what could be called 'high school running' into 6 categories. Now, if shoes are dramatically speeding up times, we should, in theory, be seeing huge differences in performane compared to the past. Actually, those referring to 'the shoes' really mean specifically the Nike Dragonfly, so keep that in mind. Let's look at these categories.
Girl's Sprints. No significant improvement over the pre-Dragonfly era.
Boy's Sprints. Some improvement over a few years ago, but not enough different runnners doing anything meaningful to suggest it's shoes. And by the way, the leading protagonist is not in Nikes.
Girl's Middle Distance. No significant or widespread difference compared to the pre-Dragonfly era.
Boy's Middle Distance. Very noticeable bump - enough that this and several other threads have been started about it. The last non-Nike sub-4, in which a NB shod runner beat an otherwise Nike-shod field, predates public availabilty of the Dragonfly - which is what the current wave is wearing.
Girls Long Distance. No significant difference compared to the pre-Dragonfly era.
Boys Long Distance. One result that improves upon a decades-old record, and he was indeed (unremarkably, given 99% of high school runnning is) in Nikes (Next%). However, not a single runner has broken a distance record in Dragonflies. Has Chapa's record been destroyed by a dozen kids this year? No one has been close. So, no Dragonfly-bump at all in this category.
This and many other threads focus on one of these 6 categories - the only one in which an army of Dragonfly-shod runners seem to be redefining norms. In the other 5, 'the shoes' seem to have no effect. So that's where I come down in this debate. There must be other factors.
I know little about the individual runners in question. I DO know that information about modern training theory is dispensed via the intern and specifically here on LRC. I also know that EPO is legal and easy to get for those with deep pockets. There are likely other things I'm not considering. Perhaps some cultural factor persuades middle-school-age kids to try the sport. I don't really know one way or the other.
However, if the Nike Dragonfly is changing everything, wouldn't we see 5k, 10k, and Steeple times showing that? Wouldn't Chapa's record be barely in the all-time top-10 by now? Wouldn't we see as many girls running amazing times as there are boys (there are, of course, some, but the ration of head-turning boys vs. girls this year is about 7:1)? If 'the shoes' help much, data would demonstrate that over a broader spectrum of runners - instead of only boy's high school mid-D.
Came across this thread and think it's an interestind debate. Specifically:
Nike Dragonfly (or maybe other Nikes - at any rate, the exploits being deservedly applauded all happened in Nike and most, I believe, in Dragonflies) allow a runner to run a mile 2 or more seconds faster than any other shoes in existence.
Vs.
The above statement is not true.
The quoted post points out how the effect is noticeable on only a very narrow spectrum of runners. Namely: male; 16-19 years old; and running events from 800m - 1 mile.
Good point, I believe. Shouldn't Mary Decker's times be laughable now if the 'Dragonfly effect' worked on everybody?
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