How would you design a fair shoe speed test?

I love a good science project. Please report your results. Personally I don't think you're going to get enough differentiation in your proposed test, but it's worth a shot. I think you'll need a bigger sample size. Maybe do experiments like that a few different times where you flip the order. Another thing to consider is longer intervals where you achieve more of a steady state. Treadmill might be interesting too where you can control the speed better.

realbdeal wrote:

I've got a pair of Hoka Rocket X on the way and have my Next% around that I've raced in the past few races. The Next% make my feet feel like crap while, and after, racing so I would love to have an excuse to ditch them.

So, is a track a fair testing surface or not considering 99% of races are on pavement/concrete? ABABABAB for 400s running exactly 6min/mi pace (race for me is roughly 5:45) and compare heart rate after? Or AAAA, 20 minute rest, BBBB. 400's too short? Would the use of a stryd pod with power help at all or no because that measurement comes after the shoe does its work?

Curious to hear thoughts or experiences if you've tried this yourself.

I think AAAA -- BBBB would be OK, but you should repeat the workout with the order switched. If you're going by HR data, use a chest strap, and longer reps than 400s would be more useful -- 2 x 10 minutes @ LT might even be best. Track should be fine unless the shoes bother you on turns?

I think the gold standard would be to do lactate testing or VO2 measurement during the workout. I've seen people do lactate testing at random workouts, so it's not that hard, but IDK the cost.

do not use heart rate at all. no way would it be good enough to draw conclusions from. a difference of 1 beat per minute usually results in a speed change of 3 seconds per mile, which is about all the difference you will see between those two shoes (or any other two modern racing flats) and you can't measure HR accurately enough to trust it to within 1 beat per minute.

I would do something like 10min intervals rather than 400s. do them at slower than marathon pace so that you can do more than a few trials. I'd do 4x10min going ABAB then a week later in the same conditions do BABA for the same workout.

use road as that is racing surface

gotta track effort level somehow, this means tracking heart rate most likely. tracking cadence too will be good, not necessarily to run to a certain cadence but to look at post run to see if something weird happened

heart rate will force you to have longer reps (id say 2k is right about right). you also wasn't to be at your race pace as that may affect which shoe is "faster" or "how much faster"

ive found that heart rate also generally rises throughout a workout from rep to rep. so rep 1 may start at 145 bpm and then rise up to 155 bpm which is expected. but then rep 4 might start at 150 bpm and end at 158 bpm.

this to me means best case is 4 x 2k as a workout. do the 1st and 3rd in one shoe and the 2nd and 4th rep in the other shoe

you could also do 5 x mile with the 5th rep in what you used to race in to establish a baseline

I've considered running similar tests, and my personal idea is use two identical weeks of training, and pick out the same day on each week, do the same workout but in each shoe.

For example: Week 1 do a Monday workout of 8x400m in shoe 1. Week 2 do the exact same week of training, and that Monday do 8x400m in shoe 2, compare heartrate. Also, with this method you could use the shoe for the entire week to test them out on distance/tempo if you'd like.

Another thing to take into consideration is that those super shoes don't increase performance across the board. They sacrifice lateral stability for straight line speed on a paved surface. Nick Symmonds did a video where he talked about that.

https://youtu.be/DaDx8InOI_Y

As a trail runner I'm wary of any shoe that makes my ankles vulnerable when cornering or running on non-flat surfaces. I hope people don't hurt themselves.

I would include Garmin's EPOC Load metrics in the comparative evaluation.