The 4% is cheating and should be banned

Wait, hang on a minute here, I'm confused!

Is your argument that moulded carbon fibre plate springs with a almost steel-like rigidness should be ok in running shoes because running shoes have foam cushioning already?! Is that really the gist of what you are saying? ?

As long as it doesn't change the physiology inside your body, it is not cheating.

Are doing squats cheating if they recruit more muscle fibers to drive more force into the ground, thus helping you run faster?

codaayyee wrote:

As long as it doesn't change the physiology inside your body, it is not cheating.

Are doing squats cheating if they recruit more muscle fibers to drive more force into the ground, thus helping you run faster?

So would you be opposed to someone racing and setting records in the bionic boots?

Master D Bater wrote:

Wait, hang on a minute here, I'm confused!

Is your argument that moulded carbon fibre plate springs with a almost steel-like rigidness should be ok in running shoes because running shoes have foam cushioning already?! Is that really the gist of what you are saying? ?

Assuming that the carbon fiber plate actually functions like a spring inside the VF (which I, along with the people who have actually studied the shoe very much doubt), yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

We should care about what the shoe does, not how it does it. The VF, like every road shoe before it, stores and returns energy with every stride. That's why research shoes that the metabolic cost of running is lower when wearing running shod than it is when running unshod. There's no principled reason to flip out about a spring made of carbon but not a spring made of foam (most shoes), or rigid plastic (On), or flexible pressurized plastic (Nike Air), or metal (Spira), or whatever Netwon's "trampoline lugs" are made out of. It's just elevating form over substance.

Hoka Carbon Rocket or whatever has the same tech as the vaporfly but isn't publicly sold and no one talks about it. hit both if you're gonna complain about the plate.

lookathoka wrote:

Hoka Carbon Rocket or whatever has the same tech as the vaporfly but isn't publicly sold and no one talks about it. hit both if you're gonna complain about the plate.

Let me be clear for you since you decided to post before reading the thread. I will just quote Ross Tucker because I have the same opinion on this that he does:

"My position would be that any device inserted into the shoe, and which purports to add to energy return or elastic recoil or stiffness should be banned. That means the carbon fiber plate, or plastic etc but not necessarily the gels/air patches that offer cushioning, and not the foam, either. Since Kram raised it on Twitter, I also don’t think that orthotics meet that standard to be banned. I’m talking specifically about a device that is there to ‘spring’ by offering elastic recoil, and that’s what a carbon fiber plate is doing when it’s curved in the way that this particular one is."

This includes VFs and the new HOKA shoes. I really could care less what the brand is. Any shoe that has an external spring inserted in it should be banned.

Just admit it wrote:

lookathoka wrote:

Hoka Carbon Rocket or whatever has the same tech as the vaporfly but isn't publicly sold and no one talks about it. hit both if you're gonna complain about the plate.

Let me be clear for you since you decided to post before reading the thread. I will just quote Ross Tucker because I have the same opinion on this that he does:

This includes VFs and the new HOKA shoes. I really could care less what the brand is. Any shoe that has an external spring inserted in it should be banned.

Thank god the ‘spring’ is internal.

Anyway, screw the OP. When’s the next MF drop!?

800 dude wrote:

There's no principled reason to flip out about a spring made of carbon but not a spring made of foam (most shoes), or rigid plastic (On), or flexible pressurized plastic (Nike Air), or metal (Spira), or whatever Netwon's "trampoline lugs" are made out of. It's just elevating form over substance.

Wow, that's surely madness to say that or said from a non-neural perspective.

As the quote above alludes to anyone surely anyone can make a clear distinction between cushioning offering impact resistance and a stiff carbon plate which will recoil pressed out of shape and offer a level of drive force.

Still, I suppose we may have cases of "logic" here being set by personal "improvements" so people will happily delude themselves of the obvious!

Master D Bater wrote:

800 dude wrote:

There's no principled reason to flip out about a spring made of carbon but not a spring made of foam (most shoes), or rigid plastic (On), or flexible pressurized plastic (Nike Air), or metal (Spira), or whatever Netwon's "trampoline lugs" are made out of. It's just elevating form over substance.

Wow, that's surely madness to say that or said from a non-neural perspective.

As the quote above alludes to anyone surely anyone can make a clear distinction between cushioning offering impact resistance and a stiff carbon plate which will recoil pressed out of shape and offer a level of drive force.

I was accepting your premise (that the carbon functions as a spring in this specific application) for the sake of argument, but it seems to me that you're rejecting my. Do you deny that foam running shoes are literally springs (i.e., they compress, store energy, and return that energy)? To use paraphrase your words, a foam midsole also deforms when pressed out of shape, then recoils, offering a level of drive force. You say the difference between foam and carbon is obvious, but you don't state it. What is the relevant difference?

If you don't believe that a foam shoe is a spring, then I guess I can understand why you're so upset about the carbon fiber plate. But that's not really an issue that's disputed (unlike the functioning of the plate). You will be hard pressed to find an expert who denies that shoes are springs. It's also fairly clear that runners have a measureably lower metabolic cost of running when they're wearing cushioned shoes (e.g.,

). In other words, one definition of a racing flat is a spring you tie to your foot to run faster than you'd otherwise be able to.

Here's another Ross Tucker quote, which demonstrates that he's not an authority you should be quoting on how these shoes function:

Bekele doesn't were the 4% because he knows it is cheating. He wants to be the best au naturale.

800 dude wrote:

I was accepting your premise (that the carbon functions as a spring in this specific application) for the sake of argument, but it seems to me that you're rejecting my. Do you deny that foam running shoes are literally springs (i.e., they compress, store energy, and return that energy)? To use paraphrase your words, a foam midsole also deforms when pressed out of shape, then recoils, offering a level of drive force. You say the difference between foam and carbon is obvious, but you don't state it. What is the relevant difference?

Well yes, I'm quite happy to accept foam has some spring-like abilities - that's why I said previously "anyone can make a clear distinction between cushioning offering impact resistance and a stiff carbon plate which will recoil pressed out of shape and offer a level of drive force". But no, foam will not produce anything tangible in terms of a recoiling driving force. That is, right there, the relevant difference. Claiming a foam midsole will provide a recoiling force against body weight is just plain daft given, once the foam is compressed it will be comparable, in terms of recoiling properties, as the surface one is running on. At this point, you could joke about the people saying "well you need to be barefoot running for it to be legitimate by saying "well no, because the surface provides a spring!" (which joking aside, I guess it does on a track...)

But putting your level of justification madness aside, an obvious analogy would be to compare drop down from a height onto a pile of cushions vs dropping down on to a taut trampoline. Yeah, they'll both give you a level of cushioning / shock absorption but it's only the trampoline which is subsequently going to recoil you back up into the air isn't it? That actually makes that guy's commments re limiting stack height an interesting potential solution because without the raise required (as we've seen in the diagrams posted on this thread) the carbon plate's springing (recoiling) potential is negated.

Thank god wrote:

Just admit it wrote:

Let me be clear for you since you decided to post before reading the thread. I will just quote Ross Tucker because I have the same opinion on this that he does:

This includes VFs and the new HOKA shoes. I really could care less what the brand is. Any shoe that has an external spring inserted in it should be banned.

Thank god the ‘spring’ is internal.

Anyway, screw the OP. When’s the next MF drop!?

Just purchased pair on Eastbay , hooray for me !

Happy Halloween

Looks like the 4% has struck again, this time in the15K. This is no different than blood doping before it was illegal. Shoes with springs in them shouldn't be legal. Running shoes need to be regulated like wetsuits are in swimming.

They grow there own trees, don't they? wrote:

Bekele doesn't were the 4% because he knows it is cheating. He wants to be the best au naturale.

You are wrong .

Everyone has access to them. There are no rules against using them. Not cheating. If you want to put rules on what shoes are and are not, fine. That is a really slippery slope, but I'm interested to see what stupid ideas people come up with.

Master D Bater wrote:

Well yes, I'm quite happy to accept foam has some spring-like abilities - that's why I said previously "anyone can make a clear distinction between cushioning offering impact resistance and a stiff carbon plate which will recoil pressed out of shape and offer a level of drive force". But no, foam will not produce anything tangible in terms of a recoiling driving force.

No. Not "some spring-like abilities," whatever in the world that means. It's a spring, period.

Why do you think that one device that deforms and returns energy is providing "a level of drive force" and another device that deforms and returns energy is providing only "cushioning"? You are relying on your intuition that there must be a difference, but you haven't articulated why.

(Incidentally, your hypothetical about cushions and a trampoline doesn't demonstrate anything. Vastly different types of springs will perform vastly differently in terms of how much energy the store and how efficiently they store it. The keys on my keyboard return to their original position because of springs, and they obviously wouldn't work very well as part of the suspension system of a car, but that doesn't mean that they don't essentially do the same thing.)

Just admit it wrote:

So would you be opposed to someone racing and setting records in the bionic boots?

The 4% shoes aren't adding energy to the runner, so to speak; they just retain more of the runner's energy than other shoes, and in this sense differ from them only in degree. That's the difference between them and the "bionic boots" you suggest.