I knew two people personally in Project 3, both low 2:30s guys. One ran a ten second PR despite getting injured this cycle, only managing one week over 35 miles since February. The other peaked his training for a half marathon a month ago and was treating today as a fun run, he came within ten seconds of his PR as well. Anecdotal of course, but worth mentioning.
"I mean, they felt pretty good. I, you know, I uh haven't done like anything besides this in them. Uh, but yeah, they felt pretty good today, so I'm happy with it. Uh, I got them two days before, two days ago, so I just did a couple strides in them and I was like yeah, they're good."
I knew two people personally in Project 3, both low 2:30s guys. One ran a ten second PR despite getting injured this cycle, only managing one week over 35 miles since February. The other peaked his training for a half marathon a month ago and was treating today as a fun run, he came within ten seconds of his PR as well. Anecdotal of course, but worth mentioning.
Well, your anecdotal captures 1/50 of the population
So the people we know about are:
Ryan Ford 3:08 PB
Linkletter 0:59 PB
Friend #1 0:10 PB
Friend #2 0:10 away from PB
Tiernan 0:23 away from PB
3/5 got PBs
Biggest PB = 2.3%
…so nothing which looks like 3.5%
…which is probably why they are trying to craft a press release.
However, when was the last time that Puma has 2 runners in the top 10 at Boston?
Not the home run we were looking for, but this shoe seems to be at least on par (better?) than the other top super shoes.
I knew two people personally in Project 3, both low 2:30s guys. One ran a ten second PR despite getting injured this cycle, only managing one week over 35 miles since February. The other peaked his training for a half marathon a month ago and was treating today as a fun run, he came within ten seconds of his PR as well. Anecdotal of course, but worth mentioning.
Well, your anecdotal captures 1/50 of the population
So the people we know about are:
Ryan Ford 3:08 PB
Linkletter 0:59 PB
Friend #1 0:10 PB
Friend #2 0:10 away from PB
Tiernan 0:23 away from PB
3/5 got PBs
Biggest PB = 2.3%
…so nothing which looks like 3.5%
…which is probably why they are trying to craft a press release.
However, when was the last time that Puma has 2 runners in the top 10 at Boston?
Not the home run we were looking for, but this shoe seems to be at least on par (better?) than the other top super shoes.
You are assuming that a runner in any particular marathon always runs at their PB level. That's obviously not true. In the absence of technology improvements, if someone has run 10 marathons, maybe they've set multiple PBs, maybe they peaked 5 marathons ago. But chances are greater than not that the last marathon they've run is not their best ever performance. Comparing a single race to someone's PB is not a good way to tell if a shoe is providing a good boost.
The results you cite—one massive PB, one big PB, three near PB—actually looks pretty good. Look at the first 5 people you can verify that ran in the Alphafly 3 and get back to us on how that compares. I'd expect several to run minutes slower than their PB because that's just how it is in any particular marathon.
"I mean, they felt pretty good. I, you know, I uh haven't done like anything besides this in them. Uh, but yeah, they felt pretty good today, so I'm happy with it. Uh, I got them two days before, two days ago, so I just did a couple strides in them and I was like yeah, they're good."
It says more about how well the shoes performed and less about how well the runners performed. Personally, I'd feel like a little bit of a fraud if I suddenly PBd by 3 minutes and knew that it was the shoes and not me.
This post was edited 34 seconds after it was posted.
30 PBs out of how many runners? I'm willing to wager there were a lot more than 30 PBs by people wearing Alphaflys
I'm willing to wager there were way more people wearing Alphaflys than the Puma shoe, but yes, it would be necessary to know the percentage of runners with PBs and the percentage of time improvement over previous PBs of the runners wearing Pumas vs Alphafly (and other competitor's models) to make any meaningful conclusion.
This post was edited 5 minutes after it was posted.
Obviously, this info does not help much, but it’s better than nothing.
It feels that only a few (none) achieved the famous 3.5% improvement.
3 min on a 2:30 marathon is only 2%, so it feels unlikely that more than one or two (none) of the 15 got 3.5%+, which was the whole point. That was suppose to be the “average” over the current top shoes. Many of the participants probably didn’t run their current PB with the “current” top shoe, so we should have expected a few runners to go 4%+ or 5%+. Linkletter (not part of the 100 pool, but…) for example ran his prior PB with the old Pumas (I believe), which is not a current top shoe.
We don’t know what their sample was, but I have to assume that they only selected athletes who ran a PB in the prior 24 months. The whole thing was about PBs, so you would not take a 45 year old guy, who ran his PB when he was 29 in your pool of participants. But I don’t know.
Obviously, this info does not help much, but it’s better than nothing.
It feels that only a few (none) achieved the famous 3.5% improvement.
3 min on a 2:30 marathon is only 2%, so it feels unlikely that more than one or two (none) of the 15 got 3.5%+, which was the whole point. That was suppose to be the “average” over the current top shoes. Many of the participants probably didn’t run their current PB with the “current” top shoe, so we should have expected a few runners to go 4%+ or 5%+. Linkletter (not part of the 100 pool, but…) for example ran his prior PB with the old Pumas (I believe), which is not a current top shoe.
We don’t know what their sample was, but I have to assume that they only selected athletes who ran a PB in the prior 24 months. The whole thing was about PBs, so you would not take a 45 year old guy, who ran his PB when he was 29 in your pool of participants. But I don’t know.
3.5% improvement in running economy, not 3.5% improvement in time. BIG difference. 3.5% improvement in running economy equates to only around 2% in performance, give or take. And that's assuming you ran the equivalent performance of your previous PB if we're comparing.to the new PB. Chances are more were in less than PB shape than were in PB shape or better.
If you were racing London under the Puma deal and had a PB of 2:24 and felt like you were in a 2:26 full shape (69 half shape).
A) Truely gamble on 1% chance you pull off 2:21 by setting off at that pace but likely to blowup and have to walk/jog it in. Trying to catch lightening in a bottle.
B) Be aspirational and go for a PB of 2:23:XX, probably with a 25% chance.
C) Be realistic and pace for a 2:26, hitting last 10k strong if you can.
D) Enjoy the experience running hard but not all out, taking a 2:32ish with a view to training/saving yourself for the marathon booked in 5 weeks, we're you think you'll be able to PB/maybe place as its a smaller affair.
If the answer is A) you've got to really believe the marketing hype could be real. (3.5% running economy/2% time gains).
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
What's wild to me is that it in this arms race it A) took someone all these years to officially best Nike and B) Nike hasn't been able to find that 'next' innovation since the original Alpha/Vaporfly breakthroughs.
Since developing ZoomX I don't think Nike has made any significant changes to their foam, which is the real magic ingredient in any supershoe. ZoomX is PEBA, which is now what almost every supershoe uses, but it seems the very top end shoes are now using aTPU - first the Adidas Evo Pro 1, and now this Puma shoe.
Per the article: "Superfoams such as PEBA in the Vaporfly and other supershoes return about 85 percent. Puma’s Nitro Elite foam, an 'aliphatic thermoplastic polyurethane' (A-TPU), reportedly returns over 90 percent. In Hoogkamer’s testing, compressing the whole shoe (not just the midsole foam) returned 89.9 percent of the energy, compared to 85.0 percent in the Nike shoe and 85.7 percent in the Adidas."
Another big issue is that in recent iterations, Nike seems to be increasingly trying to democratize the Vaporfly and Alphafly - they have to be everything to everyone, be it midpackers, hobbyjoggers, or elites. As a result, these shoes (VF3 especially) sacrifice performance for comfort. Maybe the new CEO will right the ship a bit and allow the design teams to focus on pure performance again, but Nike will have to both tweak their foam and make a more aggressive shoe if they want to get back on top.
Another data point in the aTPU vs PEBA race: Asics new 4.5oz Metaspeed Ray super-light super-shoe is aTPU...
The Puma shoes are 6oz for men's size 8.5, the vaporfly 3 is 7.2oz for size 10.5 (probably 7.0 for size 9)... So Vaporfly is 16% heavier. The weight of the shoe is pretty important. That's 1oz less you've got to move every step. 160oz (10 pounds) less weight per minute you have to lift. It all adds up, can be the difference of many seconds (but not minutes) in the course of a marathon.