runderun wrote:
I think your selection of years to compare is inappropriate and artificially deflates the effect of the new spikes your cut-off point doesn't accurately capture the proliferation of the super spikes. In 2019, only Nike athletes had a super spike and even then, not for the whole year, and only the top end athletes had them for any length of time. This means that you have a lot of athletes and a whole lot more times set in standard spikes which are deflating your average for the post-super spike estimates.
The Dragonfly really only became widely available in Q2 2020, which is when college athletes and non-Nike could have started getting them. In fact, it wasn't available in sufficient quantities until late 2020/early 2021. My guess is that if you compare times in 2020 and 2021 to 2018/2019 averages, a much greater boost in times will be apparent
Hi runderun.
I didn't exclusively choose 2019 - I just used it as an example. I cited only the top 30 athletes (and not the 50th, 100th, 150th, 200th etc) because it was only this top group of Nike/NB athletes who had access to prototypes of next gen spikes. However yes, you are correct that they did not become mainstream until mid to late 2020. That's why I will continue to track these results throughout this year and even for years to come. A bad year time wise, by pure chance, could totally skew the numbers. Likewise a good year could skew it.
Where I think the change will actually be most visible isn't near the top, but further down the list. There is pretty much *zero* variation 2010-2018 in the times of the 150th and 200th fastest season bests of the men's 1500m. In fact, across that period, every single mark is separated by 1.00 seconds for 150th, and 0.66s for 200th. I.e. while world leads and patterns eb and flow in the top 50 (where you see variation of 2-3s/1-3% year to year), there is almost no change once you get down the list. If the spikes really are worth 1s or so per lap, or even 0.5s per lap, you should 100% see a considerable spike in that 150th-200th range.
FYI though, one reason why my working hypothesis is still maxing out around 0.5% (still not insignificant) is partly based off of 2020. In 2020, covid obliterated athletics. Across the board races and meets cancelled, training disrupted etc. Despite all of the majors being cancelled and/or held with whittled down elite fields, the disruptions to training, etc. - the impact of next gen road shoes on the marathon is strong that **across the board** from WL down to the 200th best SB, 2020 was a faster year than the 8 year pre next gen shoe average. That's staggering.
However, when you look at track races, aside from world leads (and records) by Gidey and Cheptegei, 2020 was significantly *slower* than the pre spike average. By more than a second in many cases for men's 1500m, and by 2-3s in the women's 1500m. The disparity was even bigger in the 5000m. Again, this doesn't mean the spikes make you slower, it just meant that covid screwed over track.
Given the road shoes are so good that the times still overcame the massively reduced road season while track times actually slowed down, it feels logical to hypothesize that while conferring an advantage to the wearer, next gen spikes likely offer a reduced benefit compared to the road shoes.
Again, this is just a hypothesis. Will post with updates at the end of the season.
PS - some folks talking about 10,000m times above - if there is a 0.5% improvement or even slightly less, that could still be worth 2-3s in a 5k, 6-8s in a 10k on the track. Not 45s claimed by the likes of Ross Tucker (which is ludicrous IMO), but still not at all redundant. The spikes indeed could have been what got Joshua Cheptegei across the line vs Bekele's records as he beat the 5000m mark by less than 2s, and the 10000m mark by less than 7s.