Met this guy who claimed to have invented the carbon plate shoe

Was his name Al? Did he also claim to invent the internet?

sounds like an old coworker I had about 5 years ago. He's probably about 70 now. He once told me he had a 10 degree black belt and he can beat Mayweather in a boxing match.

When I was a kid in the 60's I was watching my dad shave. All they used back then were single razor blades which didn't seem to do a great job. I asked him why don't they use 2 blades on the razor instead? Sure nuf, in the early 70's they came out with those. Dam, I want reparations.

I worked at a Starbucks in the Seattle area over 20 years ago. Another guy and I effectively created the gingerbread latte. We didn't really tell anyone and years later it came out...I just had great or terrible taste depending on how you feel about gingerbread lattes.

I first heard of carbon fibre shoes in the mid-2000s from a German triathlete who went on to win an Ironman World title.

This article seems to give a pretty interesting and accurate history as far as I can tell.

freerunspeed.com

The History Of Carbon Fiber in Running Shoes - Free Run Speed

Dave@freerunspeed

Two years ago on the forums dedicated to running and triathlon the running shoe conversations centered heavily on midsole offset or the midsole height differences between the heel and forefoot. It was very common for someone...

Open link

Also worth pointing out that the Victory Elite spikes (from 2012) were carbon plated but no one seems to care. It's really not the carbon that does anything - it's the pebax foam.

Salazar did not invent the internet. He did invented the NOPing gray-zone.

You've been gored

I now see people get caught up in the voting. I thought this was funny and no one have upvoted it.

Very worth pointing out - the fervor around "carbon fiber" is hilarious - even more so when you realize that adidas had the pro-plate back in the late 90's early 2000's and before them FILA even had a carbon fiber plated shoe that Paul Tergat was wearing to good effect.

Current plates aren't even carbon fiber as people believe them to be (which is layered and laminated sheets which they have probably seen in bicycle frame manufacture etc) they are nylon with carbon fiber content (powder) usually in the 15-20% range but can be as high as 35% depending on how stiff you want the plate.

Even better is the "spring" narrative considering the plates barely even bend throughout the footstrike and have geometries counter to the direction of bending needed to give any favorable returned force. Most springs also need fixed points or one fixed point (think diving board) to create the elastic resistance needed to return energy - you could make a case that the toe creates this point in the case of the running gait cycle but really it's not fixed anywhere nearly long enough and is also in a dynamic state because of the curved nature of the forefoot.

So you are right it's the foam. The plate encourages some favorable body mechanics/biomechanical positions, but the foam is the game changer. In my opinion the biggest reason is one we have found difficult to quantify and that is the effect that the cushioning has not just in race but over the period of a season of racing and the cumulative effects of fatigue. The fact these new foams can deform so much, so quickly but at no cost to weight is the gamechanger. Is the foam a spring? Well yes - and type of material that deforms and rebounds technically is a spring - but not really with any kind of spring constant value that actually propels the mass of a human forwards. Because these new foams compress so quickly they allow peak force into the ground, which is returned to move you forwards and do so very efficiently, all the while protecting the athlete from micro fatigues on a muscular level that are tough to put a number on. They rebound fast enough to do it for each and every stride and have no detrimental weight cost.

So good shout, you know what you are talking about.

As for the possibility the OP met an old German guy who claimed to be the inventor - it's possible. Someone had to have the idea first. I know plenty of guys in the sporting footwear industry who claim to be the inventors of things just because they sat in a meeting about it one time - maybe he was just around and in the company at the time close to the project.

His story of 70s Nike shoes being designed by Europeans does not align with what I read in Phil Knight's autobiography Shoe Dog, if I recall correctly...

The first company to actually market running shoes with carbon fiber plates was Brooks in the late 80's/early 90's. The shoes were the original Brooks Beast and the GFS-100. Also the first shoes with clear rubber in the outsole so you could see the plate. I know this because i was the developer of the shoes. We had studied carbon fiber plates extensively at the human performance lab at Michigan State Univ and knew that they improved energy return and that this could be adjusted/tuned by how the plate fibers were directionally laid. We also knew that other companies were looking into this as well. The problem, ultimately, was that the shoes were stiff and didn't work all that well in terms of noticeable benefit. I attribute this to the EVA foam which was not well developed at the time. Obviously Nike was able to solve that issue as foams have changed and improved in the 30 years since we originally did it at Brooks.

Another great Stitchmo take. I seem to remember you also had some good thoughts on a post I made on superspikes a while back.

Yeah, well I've gone back to single blades, since they last 30% longer than the multiple blades.