Everyone wears super shoes/spikes for races now, but how often do pros and collegiate runners wear the for practice? If they do wear them for practice, what are the advantages? Does running faster splits in workouts help build confidence for faster racing? Is there a biomechanical reason to wear them for practices? Other thoughts?
Bottom line, I would like to know how often our elite runners wear them and why they wear them in practice?
runkeller wrote:
Everyone wears super shoes/spikes for races now, but how often do pros and collegiate runners wear the for practice? If they do wear them for practice, what are the advantages? Does running faster splits in workouts help build confidence for faster racing? Is there a biomechanical reason to wear them for practices? Other thoughts?
Bottom line, I would like to know how often our elite runners wear them and why they wear them in practice?
I'm not elite (29:30 10k) but I've trained both pre and post super shoes. I feel like I've gotten a benefit from training in them, although I would still rather use them in races and train in regular shoes than the other way around.
Pre super shoes there was a tradeoff between running slower in workouts but not beating up your legs as much (training on grass vs road, working out in trainers vs flats vs spikes). Now you can get the best of both worlds since the fastest shoes are also extremely cushioned.
I think the benefit is some combination of faster recovery and biomechanical benefits from faster splits depending on how you trained pre super shoes.
Listening to Grant Fisher on the podcast it seem like BTC does all their road workouts in super-shoes and all their track work in super-spikes. He didn't say anything about long runs, but I feel like with an unlimited shoe budget you would do long runs in some form of super-shoe.
Fisher implied that they are able to recover faster and do more workouts in spikes…Does this actually matter outside of psychologically I wonder? If you ran in trainers instead and adjusted your goal times it feels like it shouldn’t…Honestly I have no idea. As far as the road shoes’ effect amateurs improve a ton in the shoes and I doubt many are working out in them. The spikes convo I don’t know except your legs will be less beat up from races. The training effect is more unclear to me.