Strava thinks the London Marathon times improved 12 minutes last year thanks to supershoes

more people running and qualifying post covid, and having better training in my opinion, only a little is on the shoes

Weren't people citing covid as a reason for faster times to try to diminish the effect of super shoes and spikes?

Needs more info. Weather alone can make a difference of several minutes a year.

Strava and you are pretty unaware of what is going on around you.

Not sure if you remember but the 2022 version was run in October and had some other circumstances affecting it. Pretty safe to say comparing that to a more typical 2023 edition does not account for several confounding variables.

Weather was pretty poor last year,we got drenched by heavy rain for quite a lot of the race.

Median London finish time is around 4.40 so am not sure what data gives the average as 4.06. Maybe the thousands of v slow runners dont use strava so strava doesn't have full coverage. I know letsrun posters are fascinated by the performance minutiae of the 5 hour crew

yahoo is pretty much always a retarded source

Twelve minutes is avg. It's not 12 minutes for 3 hour marathoners. You have to consider people running 4 to 5 hours as well. They will improve more time wise.

Dopers! All of them! 4h dopers!

I love when current runners try to deny the benefit of the super cheater shoes even on the face of massive data. Lol! My 2:30 in 2004 is equivalent to 2:20 today and I fully believe this.

Does rojo spend more time thinking about super shoes or transgender people?

Sounds right. People who use Strava are a little more serious about the sport and more likely to wear the shoes. If you are out there for 4 hours the shoes could easily save you 12 minutes.

And on your last point, is it feasible then that the cushioning benefits increase incrementally with time on feet rather than pro rata? the gains at 2 hour pace or just over clearly arent 6 minutes, I have swathes of my own coaching evidence that also would refute that they are worth 9 mins at 3 hours, but I coach very little at 4+hour marathon level and at that level people tend to have much wider variability in improvement margins even with constant footwear.

People believe this? My memory isn't the best but were super shoes really just introduced in 2023?

Mostly correct, super shoes magically appeared sometime in late 2022 just before the Valencia Marathon. So obviously Kipchoge's sub 2 was not impacted, but Kiptum was probably a 2:12:30 marathoner at best without the 12 min advantage he got.

Super shoes have been around a while, but Super-duper shoes only came out on late 2022.

I mean, if you're running 4 hours in a pair of Asics Kayanos or 2E wide Brooks Beasts, then you might run 3:48 in a pair of Alphaflys.

It doesn't cite how they got to the 12min. Also way too small of a sample size @ 4+ hour finish times. What was weather like? Did athletes train differently? Have times been dropping steadily since 2017 when super shoes were introduced? Also, sure, maybe super shoes give you back some more time if you have more time to play with.

12min from 4:18 >>> 4:06 could be from running 5-10 more mpw or getting a cooler race day. Nobody running 2:30 is magically running 2:18 with super shoes on. More clickbait. & this time nothing given to support the claims.

I reckon on about 90-120 seconds per hour, so maybe 8 minutes off a mean average