I went on one measly long run in vaporflys...

Super shoes feel awful at a standard easy run pace, so I'm guessing you ran this way faster than you should've.

You must be running in some clunky-a*s bricks of daily trainers if your cadence increased by 10bpm. For me that tends to be the difference between an easy run and a tempo run.

ive never ran in anything other than brooks adrenalines and nike structures, so yeah about as clunky and brick-like as you can get

admittedly i went into that long run WANTING to run a little faster than normal just to see what all the hype is about, but my HR range was still in my normal long run range

Hey, you didn't ACTUALLY become a better runner when you put the cheater shoes on. They just made you faster. You have to say to yourself, X pace in cheater shoes is equivalent to 1.05X pace in regular shoes (or whatever percentage seems right).

To me it seems like a wash. You can continue training in the old clunkers, and be amazed with yourself when the marathon rolls around and you bust our the cheaters and run faster. Or you can bust out the cheaters for your long runs now, and get a short-term boost of confidence, but be less amazed when marathon day rolls around.

Fair enough.

There's nothing wrong with enjoying your running a little more; and super shoes definitely allow you to do that.

The only 'super-trainers' I've tried are the Saucony Endorphin Speed 4s, and the Asics Superblasts (though I'm not sure if these strictly fall into that category); and they're definitely more comfortable at easy-steady paces, but far worse at marathon pace and faster.

If you have the money, you could just buy a second pair of Vaporflys for race day.

Cry

I swear I’m reading a confession from a first-time heroin user

I was a holdout against super shoes, thought it was all marketing. Went racing in lightweight flats like the Nike Streak or Saucony type A. Got my legs pretty beat up every time.

Then I tried the Vaporfly (and later the Endorphin Speed) and a single run left no doubt in my mind that these were faster AND took better care of my legs.

how did the endorphin speed compare to the vaporflys? i know the speed is definitely not as aggressive as a vaporfly, but do they still have that feeling of wanting to "go forward" (don't know how else to describe this) and feel light on the feet while being cushioned? I think these were the three things that astounded me about the vaporfly as compared to my other shoes

I run pretty much all my runs in supershoes now and have found I recover way faster.

Problem is when running 80-100 mpw, even with a 3 shoe rotation, the ‘springiness’ does drop off.

That said, I’m at about 500 miles in a pair of Adios Pro 3s and still run a decent tempo in them.

Speed has a nylon plate, which makes it a little less stiff and explosive than a carbon plated shoe (easier to go slower), but still has that pop and spring

great uptempo trainer + potential race day shoe if necessary, little bit snappier and firmer than a vaporfly though.

I want to try supershoes brah but im afraid it'll injure me brah.

The endorphins were good shoes. I wore them for daily trainers for a while. But nothing is like the VaporFly.

If you haven't run in it, you literally can't imagine what a "joke shoe" it is. They are the best shoe ever. It is so light, so bouncy, and so cushioning. It is lighter than the minimalist flats we wore in the 90s. It is bouncier than any EVA shoe ever could be. And it has more cushioning than the maximalist Hokas people (like me) tried back in 2012-2015.

The VaporFly pulls off the hat-trick of light, bouncy, and cushioned.

But other posters on this thread are right, if you run in them all the time, it messes with your sense of what is normal. And honestly, at a slow pace, who cares? What is the point? For normal runs, I wear my normal trainers.

Super shoes arrived three decades after my collegiate career, so I’m not going to use them to PR. Instead, I use them to feel young and bouncy again. Maybe it’s a function of replacing elasticity lost due to aging (in addition to their normal energy return) but I can tell you, without exaggeration, that my Dragonflies give me 2 seconds per 200 meter repeat. It’s outrageous and awesome.

Ditto. This is the best answer (for people who are past their PRs).

Accurate description of my first race in Vaporflies. One puff is all it takes.

Were you born in the last 5 years?

David Roache spoke about this on his SWAP podcast. He does almost all of his runs in "supershoes" or at least trainers with carbon plates. I do the same now and it's amazed me the amount of extra mileage my body can handle.

I went from 60km a week in beat up new balance 880s to 90km in deviate nitros. They just take all the strain off your joints and reduce that heavy leg feeling before and after runs dramatically.

Vaporflys and extreme racing shoes will both wear out quick and put a lot of strain on your archilles but even as a young athlete, switching to super trainers has been the single best change to my training.

Since your body knows effort (generally) and not pace, I'd ignore the pace benefits if I were the OP. For me, the game changer is the lack of beating on your legs.

But also, keep in mind that after a couple hundred miles, your super shoes won't be super anymore. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sms.14526

VF and other plated super shoes gives you the lightness of old racing flats while providing max cushioning and bounce off the plates. But are you getting the training benefit unless you speed up the pace?