It would be quite ironic if Nike invented super shoes to give their athletes an advantage but in the end adidas ends up with a shoe they can't match.
I know Kiptum said he's not in peak form for Chicago but what if he is and he smashes 2 hours in a pair of adidas shoes?
I thought Kiptum was sponsored by Nike? I remember y'all talking about his sponsorship conflict with Nike and a Chinese company in the podcast. What happened with that?
There's no 'if', same materials, same response, 50g less less weight. That's a game changing response by adidas in this arms race.
What you describe is nothing like “game changing.” Moving from ultra thin shoes to thick shoes with a substantial rocker, what previously would have been an unusual degree of longitudinal bending stiffness, and brand new foam technology that returns a whole lot more energy was game changing. Making the same thing a little bit lighter is a modest incremental improvement on the other thing that was the game changer.
Absolutely correct. It's common knowledge this "arms race" is really a "foam race" right? Stack heights, rockers, reducing bending therefore loss of energy in foot/knee joints etc are all nice but don't really add up to the majority of the running economy benefits in these shoes - it's all about the foam.
The reduced weight which is kind of obvious in it's advantage, but the other key benefit lies in the ability of the foams to compress extremely quickly under the load of the footstrike which maximizes ground force as a primary function of any "cushioning" material is to actually reduce it. Add in rebound/elastic resiliency of the foam which is typically seen only in heavier, denser foam and this is where the vast majority of your 4,5,6% RE benefits lie.
As to "game-changing" well it depends with respect to what exactly. Adidas never had parity with Nike in terms of the foam they used to begin with. They tried to use the same supplier (zotefoam) but couldn't because Nike had signed an exclusivity clause with them to produce ZoomX. Adidas then needed to find another vendor and ended up with a TPE based foam (vs a Pebax based foam) which they called Lightstrike Pro and while it was far superior to Boost (dense, hard to compress due to the elastic tension the material held) it wasn't as light or as resilient as the Pebax based ZoomX.
It's why the Adios Pro, despite being a good shoe - especially compared to the prior boost models simply didn't provide the same running economy benefits as the Vaporfly or Alphafly.
75g of weight saving + almost certainly better/faster compression and rebound (because this TPE wasn't "baked" in a mold) probably equates to a 1% RE improvement on their previous product, so yes - it's game changing for adidas relative to their existing product. But in terms of the industry it's only as game changing insomuch that it closes the gap between the adidas and Nike and their pinnacle performance product.
So it's actually not even a modest incremental improvement on the game changer - it's a parity-generating improvement with respect to their number one competitor.
Nike shoes btw, with 2.01.09 (Kipchoge), 2.01.25 (Kiptum) and 2.01.41 (Bekele) still hold higher scoring performances to anything run in any adidas shoe including this performance by Assefa.
So I'm in agreement with you - the basis behind this "changing of the guard" in the "super shoe wars" has no actual basis other than emotionally and is still non-existent yet.
This post was edited 3 minutes after it was posted.
It would be quite ironic if Nike invented super shoes to give their athletes an advantage but in the end adidas ends up with a shoe they can't match.
I know Kiptum said he's not in peak form for Chicago but what if he is and he smashes 2 hours in a pair of adidas shoes?
I thought Kiptum was sponsored by Nike? I remember y'all talking about his sponsorship conflict with Nike and a Chinese company in the podcast. What happened with that?
Yeah this is confusing to me too. As of April this year Kiptum was still a Nike athlete and running under 2.02 in their product.
What you describe is nothing like “game changing.” Moving from ultra thin shoes to thick shoes with a substantial rocker, what previously would have been an unusual degree of longitudinal bending stiffness, and brand new foam technology that returns a whole lot more energy was game changing. Making the same thing a little bit lighter is a modest incremental improvement on the other thing that was the game changer.
Absolutely correct. It's common knowledge this "arms race" is really a "foam race" right? Stack heights, rockers, reducing bending therefore loss of energy in foot/knee joints etc are all nice but don't really add up to the majority of the running economy benefits in these shoes - it's all about the foam.
The reduced weight which is kind of obvious in it's advantage, but the other key benefit lies in the ability of the foams to compress extremely quickly under the load of the footstrike which maximizes ground force as a primary function of any "cushioning" material is to actually reduce it. Add in rebound/elastic resiliency of the foam which is typically seen only in heavier, denser foam and this is where the vast majority of your 4,5,6% RE benefits lie.
As to "game-changing" well it depends with respect to what exactly. Adidas never had parity with Nike in terms of the foam they used to begin with. They tried to use the same supplier (zotefoam) but couldn't because Nike had signed an exclusivity clause with them to produce ZoomX. Adidas then needed to find another vendor and ended up with a TPE based foam (vs a Pebax based foam) which they called Lightstrike Pro and while it was far superior to Boost (dense, hard to compress due to the elastic tension the material held) it wasn't as light or as resilient as the Pebax based ZoomX.
It's why the Adios Pro, despite being a good shoe - especially compared to the prior boost models simply didn't provide the same running economy benefits as the Vaporfly or Alphafly.
75g of weight saving + almost certainly better/faster compression and rebound (because this TPE wasn't "baked" in a mold) probably equates to a 1% RE improvement on their previous product, so yes - it's game changing for adidas relative to their existing product. But in terms of the industry it's only as game changing insomuch that it closes the gap between the adidas and Nike and their pinnacle performance product.
So it's actually not even a modest incremental improvement on the game changer - it's a parity-generating improvement with respect to their number one competitor.
Nike shoes btw, with 2.01.09 (Kipchoge), 2.01.25 (Kiptum) and 2.01.41 (Bekele) still hold higher scoring performances to anything run in any adidas shoe including this performance by Assefa.
So I'm in agreement with you - the basis behind this "changing of the guard" in the "super shoe wars" has no actual basis other than emotionally and is still non-existent yet.
I was under the impression that Pebax was manufactured by Arkema and ZoomX was therefore Arkema produced ZoomX. Is this not correct?
13 December, 2017 – Zotefoams announces that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Nike to develop footwear technology and supply materials for the global footwear, apparel and equipment company. Zotefoams, a leade...
You are right, the raw material Pebax is Arkema - Zote created the foam using the Pebax polymer. It was previously known as Pebaxfoam, then Zotekpeba foam and an iteration of thus became what we know as ZoomX
This post was edited 35 seconds after it was posted.
You are right, the raw material Pebax is Arkema - Zote created the foam using the Pebax polymer. It was previously known as Pebaxfoam, then Zotekpeba foam and an iteration of thus became what we know as ZoomX
If you don't mind me asking, Salvitore, how do you know all of these things?
You are right, the raw material Pebax is Arkema - Zote created the foam using the Pebax polymer. It was previously known as Pebaxfoam, then Zotekpeba foam and an iteration of thus became what we know as ZoomX
If you don't mind me asking, Salvitore, how do you know all of these things?
I don't mind you asking. I may have worked in the athletic footwear industry and specifically on and around these products in the past.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
If you don't mind me asking, Salvitore, how do you know all of these things?
I don't mind you asking. I may have worked in the athletic footwear industry and specifically on and around these products in the past.
Oh wow. I have been putting together a presentation for my colleagues on running shoe innovations and I appreciate the information you've provided here. Thank you.
You are right, the raw material Pebax is Arkema - Zote created the foam using the Pebax polymer. It was previously known as Pebaxfoam, then Zotekpeba foam and an iteration of thus became what we know as ZoomX
According to the below link, Zotefoams entered a partnership with Nike to develop footwear technology in December 2017, but ZoomX was already in Nike's shoes in 2016. So were they working with Nike on this project before entering into the partnership?
I just read Tuckers hypothesis which is mostly with respect to this "responder theory" and yes he I believe he is 100% right. I mean you could even take it as granular as saying that athletes of certain bodyweight that can generate certain amounts of ground force could actually utilize/be better suited to the properties of the midsole packages than others. It's basically a pandoras box of factors that could be behind "neutrals", "mid-responders", "super-responders" etc, but this situation obviously has existed forever at least in terms of the athletes - it's just that these new products have characteristics that have obviously created a lot more variance in the responses and hence the potential performances.
With respect to Assefa, I think that it is obvious that this situation is very different had she run her debut 2.15.37 in a pair of adios 1 or 2's (and I mean the old EVA version) and then come out and run in a shoe that was offering a comparative running economy benefit upwards of 5% compared to those shoes (and as Tucker suggests as high as 9 or 10% depending on the candidate) - but that wasn't the case. The fact is we know to a degree how she responded to a "super shoe" in 2022 - a pretty damn good 2.15.37 result
Yes there are other non-shoe related factors we could point to - such as that she is a further year into marathon training and race execution than Berlin '22, might have had an even better day than she did in '22 etc, okay sure, granted.
But to explain a 2.75% "velocity increase" as Ross refers to it, we would have to put a value on the above, include the 0.6% RE saving due to the weight reduction (which translates to around 0.4% actual velocity benefit under his 2/3 rule) and then explain the rest of it to a (clearly) different level of "response" to a shoe that was in reality only 75g less and most likely compressed and rebounded a little faster under her body weight due to the reduced foam density.
She already ran 2.15 in shoe with an approx RE benefit of 5.5% - I just don't know if you can attribute this next jump into the 2.11's with the shoe eliciting that much better a response from her than her previous one. I mean I guess it's possible the properties of this midsole (other than just weight) just happened to perfectly align/cater to her weight and force generating capabilities - but man, that would have to be in the ballpark of good fortune similar to when Flo-Jo happened to score a perfectly still 0.0 wind in the midst of an afternoon of +3 to +5 tailwinds back in Indy '88 ;).
You are right, the raw material Pebax is Arkema - Zote created the foam using the Pebax polymer. It was previously known as Pebaxfoam, then Zotekpeba foam and an iteration of thus became what we know as ZoomX
According to the below link, Zotefoams entered a partnership with Nike to develop footwear technology in December 2017, but ZoomX was already in Nike's shoes in 2016. So were they working with Nike on this project before entering into the partnership?
Yeah they entered an official partnership in 2017 which ensured exclusivity - that doesn't mean they couldn't and didn't work with them prior. All that happened in 2017 was that Nike protected the ZF proprietary foaming technique used in ZoomX from being used in foam creation for any other brand (because don't forget, anyone can get their hands on Pebax).
I don't believe this is the case here, but remember Nike could and can call whatever foam of theirs, whatever they want. ZoomX in 2016 could in theory have been stock standard EVA and they could have called it ZoomX if they wanted to. There is no "rule" against that.
But the reality is there was another brand having it's foam supplied by Zote around this time (hint: begins with R, and yes it's incredibly ironic) and Nike couldn't get absolute exclusivity until the details were sorted out with this brand and how/if they could still source from Zote.
I think I'm telling you enough here - was this satisfactory?
It's just like how Kerr beating Ingebrigtsen was ironic. Because Ingebrigtsen beat Kerr most of the time for a while, and then, uh Kerr beat him instead. Super ironic.
Yeah they entered an official partnership in 2017 which ensured exclusivity - that doesn't mean they couldn't and didn't work with them prior. All that happened in 2017 was that Nike protected the ZF proprietary foaming technique used in ZoomX from being used in foam creation for any other brand (because don't forget, anyone can get their hands on Pebax).
I don't believe this is the case here, but remember Nike could and can call whatever foam of theirs, whatever they want. ZoomX in 2016 could in theory have been stock standard EVA and they could have called it ZoomX if they wanted to. There is no "rule" against that.
But the reality is there was another brand having it's foam supplied by Zote around this time (hint: begins with R, and yes it's incredibly ironic) and Nike couldn't get absolute exclusivity until the details were sorted out with this brand and how/if they could still source from Zote.
I think I'm telling you enough here - was this satisfactory?
rojo.........you've been complaining about super shoes for the last 6+ years. did these shoes personally attacked you or something? shoes have always been part of the equation when it comes to running performance. how about you complain that the nike zoom victory was better than the nike zoom rival d? how about you complain that track spikes had always broke IAAF rules so everyone in history should be stripped of all records and medal wins?
rojo.........you've been complaining about super shoes for the last 6+ years. did these shoes personally attacked you or something? shoes have always been part of the equation when it comes to running performance. how about you complain that the nike zoom victory was better than the nike zoom rival d? how about you complain that track spikes had always broke IAAF rules so everyone in history should be stripped of all records and medal wins?
I have a theory that I think is a good one.
A lot of former runners can't let go of the "if only" narrative or notion, which is "if only __________, I would have done this or that". And it doesn't even have to be attached to anything super elite etc, but there is this protectiveness of goals that perhaps weren't attained or were difficult to attain that evolving tech has made easier - and that's tough to reconcile with for many. "If only I had the same shoes as these guys today I wouldn't have only run 2.23.11 for the marathon I would have run under 2.15" - classic example.
I think there is this sentiment of unfairness because other than our footwear, there aren't a lot of major variables in the sport we can attribute differences to. Like a half marathon is 13.1 miles no matter what and it's ultimately measured by a time which is dictated ultimately by our fitness which is dictated by our hard work in training. When the sanctity of the "hard work" appears to be circumvented (in this case by a product) and the outcome is better, (some) guys get angry and fixated on ways to justify why, in this case, athletes of what they believe are comparable talents, simply run faster.
No other sport really has these set of conditions - especially the concept of time which is the key performance indicator and is constant across eras.
I often wonder if the same conversations were had when footwear was revolutionized by EVA midsoles - the difference going from dense PU and flat rubber (akin to strapping a slab of wood to your foot) to EVA and textured outsoles might not have been as great in terms of our new favorite term "running economy benefit", but it must have been something right? Maybe people were just more secure and accepting of what they did relative to the era in which they did it and weren't so insecure about it they needed to constantly point out the new advantages of the current day and age. Just a thought.
Let us say that LetsRun is the best running site in the world, hands down. IF I came up with a better one, we wouldn’t say how IRONIC it is, would we? Or would we? I wouldn’t.
