Rojo and I probably disagree on the amount of seconds shoes are worth. But he is clearly right about another thing, I have been saying this for years, as well. Given the same or close to the same level of fitness, anyone today can run up to 5K as fast or faster on a Climate controlled 200M speedway track, in fact getting 200M splits makes it even easier to keep track of split times and fix , where you might be off on a lap or two. Look at what Fisher just did, and Rojo is right about another piece he mentioned, if you can get right out on the "edge" so to speak and then ratchet it down last 1600-2K negatively, that obviously is an optimal way to get there. I said this last night after watching absurd, after absurd perfomances over this weekend. You give gifted guys/gals, optimal conditions,, close to or perfect pacing, they just get on the train, look at the back of guy in front, and go for a ride until the real running starts. Almsot every race these days, even "back" heats are set up for some level of target pacing. In College, you also have 23-25 year old folks running, getting their redshirts and CoVid years added on.You get well coached, better trained, older, better paced guys, running really frigging fast.
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Ive always thought that on average Indoor tracks would be faster because of the controlled climate / no wind, but on a perfect day in 60 degrees / no wind, an outdoor track would be slightly faster. The perfect day rarely comes around for outdoor track though, so indoor is going to be faster on average, guys just arent in shape in February generally.
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Rojo’s 3-4 seconds per mile is ludicrous, but I think we all know when superspikes or supershoes are involved he likes to double what he probably truly believes to make his point. Tainted 2016 Olympics, 2019 Worlds etc.
You guys understand that Mo Ahmed ran 12:47 on a high school track? Let’s relax with this myth-making around the BU Track surface. I grew up running on it and Reggie Lewis. It’s only slightly faster than Reggie (for races 800 and up), not multiple seconds per mile (maybe a second) and Reggie is a slower banked track for what it’s worth. Any new 200m track indoors is lightning fast due to perfect conditions that you can’t count on outdoors and charitable banks.
I do think Jerry needs to pump the tires of his men’s team a bit. Woody is handled ludicrously to me. We have him scorching a last lap 26 in the B heat why?This is a guy who to me is every bit as fit as Paul Chelimo, but approaches races like he’s an underdog who can’t hang. He clearly should have been in the A heat and he’s breaking 13 and maybe even taking down Mo. Fisher meanwhile got 5th in the Olympics and should be thinking about challenging for the medals like Shelby/GDS/Mo do. Yet it feels to me like there’s still the happy to make the final and try to hang tough mindset.
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Interesting and well thought out view.....even though you ran on it , and disagree, the data alone would support BU track being at the very least, the fastest comparative surface in the U.S. without question. Its not just the Top end Elite performances, its the data on guys, next tier types and slower even, than that.... who have never ever run within 2-3 seconds of their mile or comparative 1500M times from anywhere else, and there is nothing wrong with this, but it just is.
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king999 wrote:
Interesting and well thought out view.....even though you ran on it , and disagree, the data alone would support BU track being at the very least, the fastest comparative surface in the U.S. without question. Its not just the Top end Elite performances, its the data on guys, next tier types and slower even, than that.... who have never ever run within 2-3 seconds of their mile or comparative 1500M times from anywhere else, and there is nothing wrong with this, but it just is.
Well it’s where most top US pros go to time trial. In Europe the East Africans have been running lightning fast the last couple years on indoor tracks. Elle Purrier ran 4:16 at Millrose. BU doesn’t yield a 4:14 I just don’t believe that.
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Well, at one point The Armory, was clearly touted as the fastest Indoor Oval in the U.S. it's been a while since that was no longer true. Ocean Breeze is very very fast. And a lot of guys have run very quick on Penn State hydraulic speedway, there are quite a few "Barely " legal spots (kidding, LOL) out there now.
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39 of top 5,000 M (I) runners have done it at BU - 23 this year
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Yes, indoor tracks are absurdly fast now. There is virtually no handicap to running a race 1500 and up indoors. But 12:53 is just fast no “it was indoors” qualifier needed. It’s why while Mo Ahmed got a NR it’s actually merely a decent performance for him behind last year in Italy and well behind his outdoor AR and two medal performances.
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Geez. I had a front row seat to Lagat's 13:11 AR in 2010 at Reggie Lewis, and I thought that was fast. Times have gone past Ludicrous to PLAID.
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Wise Old Man wrote:
ragingclue wrote:
Rupp certainly didn’t have the same amount or quality of competition in his AR attempt that Fisher had last night, I’ll give that to you. But objectively speaking yes this new record is another echelon of great. I give more weight to the BU track surface being ridiculously fast than I do to the shoes
In the post race interview by JG, Fisher himself referenced the track. Yes, he ran fast and handily beat a quality field, but the absolute time has to be viewed in this context. In XC we all agree that it’s nearly impossible to compare times across different venues, but we hold track times to be an absolute standard. I’m afraid we are entering an era in both indoor and even outdoor track where the venue will be part of the conversation. You know, so and so ran X, but that was at BU or Tokyo….so that’s only worth Y at Eugene….. I wish there were detailed rules regarding track construction that would remove any meaningful differences.
People used to think Stanford and Heusden were short because everyone ran fast there, but now those meets aren't so special anymore. Fast tracks are a self-fulfilling prophecy and have more to do with getting the right personnel in the right place with the right weather and the right setup. Americans will rarely run as fast in Europe as they would in a Sound 10k or Boston indoor setup because they're usually so far over their heads. Whether it's Stanford in the early 00s, or BU the last ten years, or Jerry's little Portland Jesuit meets, the key factor is they can set up the pacing perfectly. The track has less to do with it than people think.
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between doping and supershoes and magic tracks...I'm losing interest in times meaning much. Great job, track and field.
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Keep trying wrote:
Wise Old Man wrote:
It’s a new age. Fisher is clean, I’ll bet anything, but the shoes and the tracks are juiced. Fisher in his typical honest fashion admitted as much. Fisher is awesome, a joy to watch, but let’s not kid ourselves. If Cheptegei was running tonight he might have run 12:30. That’s not a knock on Fisher, just reality.
Cheptegei lost to Ahmed badly just 7 months ago in Italy. Fisher just beat Ahmed.
Cheptegei beat both Fisher and Ahmed in the 10k and 5k at the Olympics where it actually matters.
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Weird to see people rave about races with negative splits and pacers as its something new. At least refreshing to see that some are coming out of the realm of "sit and kick".
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The fact that Rojo/Wejo are constantly bringing up "supershoes" just reeks of jealousy. Or at the very least, "old man get off my lawn!" syndrome.
Look, technology has been moving sports forward forever. It's hard to imagine that Dragonflies are a bigger improvement over the next best thing (Victories? Avantais?) than the best shoes/spikes of generations past had over their counterparts. There was a reason everyone was dropping serious coin on Jasaris back in the day.
Do I think the new shoes are faster....sure! But everything is faster than barefoot, so no asterisk necessary.
Fwiw, it is incredibly hard to isolate the true affect of shoes...so many confounding factors. I believe wavelight is a bigger factor. With wavelight, I think Hocker/Teare run 348high-349low.
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Bdubs wrote:
Do I think the new shoes are faster....sure! But everything is faster than barefoot, so no asterisk necessary.
One winter I ran the same 3 mile community race around a lake for 8 weeks in a row in the lightest 6 or 7 ounce racing shoes that I had, except one of the weeks I ran the workouts barefoot and then ran the race the same way. I think it was the 6th of the 8 races and it was by far the fastest one, 14:40 or something like that which I won. Barefoot is the fastest by far, except there's not the same protection from sharp objects. Regardless, I've run many workouts and track races barefoot.
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don'twatchshoedio wrote:
We have seen an estimate from a pro, Nick Willis, that it shocked him when it took 2 seconds off what he expected to run for 600m in a workout, and he's finely tuned to pace.
Just a correction. That was from memory and was wrong. It was 2 seconds faster in a 1200m time trial, not 600m. He was using NB super spikes FWIW.
There's a good thread with contributions from PhD biomedical engineer/shoe researcher @Burnsy here with his guesses for benefits of the super spikes from a year ago. Go to post #47 for his "ballparking" of the advantage - about 1 second per lap. That was a year ago, and he was talking about more testing of the spikes in the future. @Burnsy, can you update us with findings since a year ago, if any?
Geoff Burns on super spikes "2021 on the track is going to look like 2018 on the roads" page 3
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Just looking up the World Athletics scoring tables, and Fisher's performance equates to 12:39 outdoors, and 7:26 for 3000m indoors. If you think BU is a standard track then Fisher is in world bearing shape, as in Cheptegei, Barega, Kiplimo, Ingebrigtsen territory. How he performs over the rest of the season, and how well he competes with those guys will give context to the 12:53 at BU
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I agree that times are interesting, but whatever happened to the simple thrill of racing. Ahmed was supposed to get this and the race itself was great!!!
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Bdubs wrote:
The fact that Rojo/Wejo are constantly bringing up "supershoes" just reeks of jealousy. Or at the very least, "old man get off my lawn!" syndrome.
Look, technology has been moving sports forward forever. It's hard to imagine that Dragonflies are a bigger improvement over the next best thing (Victories? Avantais?) than the best shoes/spikes of generations past had over their counterparts. There was a reason everyone was dropping serious coin on Jasaris back in the day.
Do I think the new shoes are faster....sure! But everything is faster than barefoot, so no asterisk necessary.
Fwiw, it is incredibly hard to isolate the true affect of shoes...so many confounding factors. I believe wavelight is a bigger factor. With wavelight, I think Hocker/Teare run 348high-349low.
Actually it's not that hard to quantify the advantage of the shoes. they did it with the road shoes [4%] in the lab and their estimated improved efficiency matched up very well with the real world race results seen in thousands of performances. So.....i think you are wrong. What is wrong with acknowledging something that seems very very apparent and, like I said, has been proven with the road shoes, that: this new "equipment" is an advantage over past shoes?? I'll tell you: absolutely nothing wrong with it.
We've seen the same thing in many other sports:
1] in cycling improved bicycles of course made professional riders much much faster
2] in swimming, the new technology put into the full body suits made long standing World Records immediately obsolete to the point where they banned these suits
3] in baseball new synthetic /aluminum/composite bats made hitting the ball fast so much easier than with wood bats they had to start capping the technology for the safety of youth players
So What on earth is the problem with recognizing an obvious technological Improvement in Racing shoes that allows more efficiency and faster times with the same output of energy?? Again, absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact if we don't acknowledge it then the next most obvious conclusion is that all these guys are doped. I don't believe that. But that is the road we will go down if you don't acknowledge the better shoes. [ AND tracks]
As far as your conjecture that the wave light technology makes a bigger difference, YOU are the one engaging in pure conjecture much more so than the people touting the shoes as the biggest difference in recent times versus the past. [ until you have some serious data/ experiments to show us that there is a big advantage]
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Tyrone,
Interesting points...but read those studies. They're not always as conclusive as you think. Again, do I think Vaporflys are faster...heck yeah.
If we see performances level off somewhat, I think that's a strong clue that the pandemic, better training, and TT style races had something to do with it.
Performances will be elevated though. You can't deny other confounding effects. One that has been mentioned in the past is that the new shoes/spikes allow you to train harder. I can say for certain I have less fatigue after marathons/HMs because of vaporflys.
I just think the argument is way overplayed. If technology were so important, Jim Ryan/ Marty Liquori, etc...were all 342 milers. And who knows, maybe they were.
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