Grant Fisher's shoes get the American Record

Throw your spikes on the track and have them run for you then.

I call it a wash. Lagat had synthetic EPO in his A Sample.

nobody cares.

So right. And all these top Kenyans and Ethios would be 35 seconds ahead of Grant. Oh wait ....

Yeah, no. He would have been 12:50 with a pair of Matumbos.

Ha! Yep! Spot on! Swap out Fisher’s shoes with a pair of spikes from just 3 years ago and he’s a 13:58 runner. Ouch! Results are in and people are going to like the results. More to follow.

Or…they’re not really any better than Fisher. Uh oh.

Everyone cares otherwise 100% of pro runners wouldn’t be sporting cheat shoes.

We neither know what Lagat was on, nor what Fisher is on. But looking at all numbers, it seems that the super spikes give you less than 2 seconds per mile.

You’re saying 6 seconds are just from him wearing cheat shoes? So, swap out shoes and he’s a 12:53 runner?

No. I'm saying that they don't give you 6 seconds in a 5000 ("less than...")

5,000 is longer that 3 miles. If they give you 1.95 seconds (< 2 seconds per mile) for 3 miles that’s 5.85 and then another half second or so that’s over 6 seconds.

Put this into perspective. Real athletes run on cinder tracks. Records from any all-weather surfaces shouldn’t be counted. And if the athlete ever had access to metrics like lactate levels or VO2 max, then that’s cheating. And if they ever ran in wicking fabric, then they’re bloody cheaters. And if they learned about nutrition in school, then they should be subject to suspension and should be made to return prize or endorsement money and issue a tearful apology. And they should have to witness as parents make their children avert their eyes when they pass by on the street. And they should feel shame deep in their souls because they knowingly participated in athletics with so many unfair advantages that have rendered their performances meaningless and farcical. Pure sport is 1950s knowledge and technology frozen in time for perpetuity. I won’t accept that a human being could ever run faster than a 13:40 5k without cheating. I believe these things because denigrating the achievements of others makes me feel less awful about my own trite and meaningless life.

Blahahahahaa! Yeah, remember when all weather tracks came out and Clarke and Ryun took advantage and obliterated their own WRs?! Remember when all weather came out and the world took advantage and completely crushed the distance records the following year?! Blahahahaaaa! Yeah, me neither. Took 7 years to break the mile WR by .1 second LOL! Access to lactate levels and VO2 max?! Yeah, next time I race I’ll go over my levels 5 minutes before and take advantage of that 20 second pr. Or better yet, I’ll carry them with me. Wicking fabric?! Why didn’t you say so. Didn’t know wicking fabric was worth 15 seconds in a 5k. And here I was just going to wear a weighted vest. Nutrition?! What “nutrition” can I take just before my race that’s going to instantly cut 15 seconds off my next 5k? A banana? An apple? What?

The shoes aren’t about training harder or smarter. They have absolutely zero to do with actual effort and everything to do with instant PR without any additional work. Hey, kinda like EPO or whatever else is out there. But that’s cool.

So, the 10,000 m WR would be 26:17 on a cinder track and without the training methods developed over the second half of the twentieth century? I don’t think you’re thinking about the complex conditions of possibility necessary for the evolution of running performances.

You’re making an argument here about the lag time between the introduction of a technology and measurable performance results. Fair enough. But new technologies and training innovations have made a difference over time—and a huge one at that. I’ll concede that the shoes provide some advantage immediately and seemingly without extra work, but the questions remain, What’s wrong with that and why should we care? Everyone has access to the technology and the shoes don’t actually make a person a better athlete. The shoes only make energy output more efficient (less energy being wasted per foot strike). You could argue that these shoes give us the most accurate measurement of the potential of the human body yet.

I think you’re too ennamored with the idea that this sport is, or can be, solely about the hard work of individual athletes. PEDs, for instance, allow an athlete to recover faster and thus train harder. PED users probably work as hard or harder than other athletes. Ultimately, the fact is that running performances occur in particular historical contexts and will always be subject to science, technology, environmental conditions, etc. Grant Fisher ran that race. His shoes contributed to his performance, as did Yomif Kejelcha, as did Jacob Krop, as did whatever he ate today, as did the genetic lottery he hit at birth, as did the perfect temperatures in Brussels this evening, as did his training. That’s true for every athlete in every race. Attributing the performance solely (or primarily) to the shoes is crass, reductive, deluded, and inaccurate.

He could have ran 5k in 10 minutes and you'd still claim it's the shoes.

Which is why you and everyone else from years ago always wanted to run for their best times in cinder tracks in the shoes that Ryun and Paavo Nurmi ran in (clodhoppers)! Of course! Let’s never purchase and wear any improved shoes! 🙃 Let’s all make that promise now. Rewind shoes to anything available before 1950 and that’s it!

Without the shoes Fisher would run high 12:50s. Still an incredible runner but these super times from super shoes must be put into perspective. However, although stats are nice it will always be about place in sports. So when he wins an Olympic/world medal is the “time” to get excited. Until then it real doesn’t matter if he runs 11:46.