Evidence: ARs all over the place, great track creds. Possibly America's all-time female GOAT in the same convo as Deena, Joanie and Decker and a few others like Shalane/Rowbury. But we learned early that she wasn't a super shoe responder. No fault of hers, just some stride/flow/gait thing that didn't jibe well with the current generation of super shoes so her competitiveness was reduced among her peers [the best], who were now using new equipment, and only those that won the genetic lottery, trained like a pro and recovered properly and were blessed with recovery/healing eliteness now must also be super shoe high responders to remain competitive. Alas Molly is not other data:https://runningmagazine.ca/sections/gear/molly-huddle-is-concerned-about-nike-alphafly-at-us-marathon-trials/https://www.letsrun.com/news/2018/11/gotta-shoes-des-linden-molly-huddle-discuss-nikes-vaporfly-4-running-shoe-arms-race/ nov, 2018
Molly Huddle, who set the American record in the half marathon earlier this year, will be running in a customized pair of Sauconys (Freedom upper, Type A lower), but they are customized because of her history of foot issues. She has read about the Vaporflys, but doesn’t want to lose sight of the human component.
“It’s a shoe,” Huddle says. “I don’t want to take away from what the athlete is doing. I wouldn’t say that Shalane [Flanagan] didn’t win New York if she didn’t wear Vaporflys because she’s an amazing athlete. I’m not really in the lab…I think if it’s really gonna be like the wetsuits in swimming, it’s either going to be something everyone starts making or it’ll be wiped out of the sport. So I think we’re still kind of in that tipping point to see which way it goes.”
Molly Huddle, Saucony ("It’s kind of the wild west right now.”)
“There were a lot of Vaporflys around me today I noticed. People were just popping off the ground in those. Obviously, we [Saucony] have the Endorphin Pro (a carbon-plated shoe), which, I’m kind of working through some ankle problems so I’m not wearing it today.
But it will be interesting to see what happens the next couple weeks. It sounds like the World Athletics working group is making some decisions on the shoe, so we’ll see what they say. I’m pretty comfortable in a low stack height just because of my biomechanical issues so that’s kind of what I’m sticking with for now.
Molly is still the best IMO, just not a super shoe high-responder [ankle issues/biomechanical/low stack pref]