My team (NAIA) almost exclusively wears Nike Dragonflys. While these shoes are fine for our better runners with decent economy, I think they are hurting our more developmental guys in the 3k-5k distances. Once they get tired, it seems like the stiffness of the shoes just makes things deteriorate fast. The rare guys who have non-plated shoes never seem to have this issue in races, and when guys have worn carbon-plated flats on the track in a 10k, things seem fine.
I could be off-base on all this, but it's my gut feeling is that Dragonflys have a negative effect for certain runners over certain distances. Doesn't seem like they have too much of a negative affect on these same guys over 1500m.
Can anyone corroborate this? I might just suck as a coach...