1500m Top Performances Adjusted for Super Spikes

So Jakob is maybe worse than when he was 17 and ran 3.31.18 in non superspikes, and is much worse than Farah at 1500m even tho he has been much more dominant at the distance. Kind of seems to make no sense to me

The only way to solve this is to have runners run a race in non-super spikes and see what they can run.

that’s cute. so people are way slower now that 20-30 years ago. how come, Einstein?

Now adjust them for 90s rampant EPO use.

it's a no-win situation. If they run the same time, the spikes are worthless, the shoe company isn't happy; If they don't, then the progression we have been having is all about the shoes, the athletes aren't happy.

Really good point. Doesn't make sense. I looked at his 5K times the same way. It would put his 12:48 in 2021 at 13:12, which is only 5 seconds faster than his 13:17 when he was 17 in 2018. A 5-second improvement over 5K after years of maturation and elite training and racing is absurd. Like people have said before: you gotta run the race with the traditional spikes to find out. Based on this example, seems like the old spikes wouldn't slow him down much if at all. Though, we're talking about the 3% adjustment; the 1% adjustment seems more plausible.

Year | Time | 1% Adj | 2% Adj | 3% Adj
-------------------------------------------------------
2016 | 14:38.67 | 14:38.67 | 14:38.67 | 14:38.67
2017 | 13:35.84 | 13:35.84 | 13:35.84 | 13:35.84
2018 | 13:17.06 | 13:17.06 | 13:17.06 | 13:17.06
2019 | 13:02.03 | 13:02.03 | 13:02.03 | 13:02.03
2021 | 12:48.45 | 12:56.21 | 13:04.13 | 13:12.22
2022 | 13:02.03 | 13:09.93 | 13:17.99 | 13:26.22
2023 | 13:11.30 | 13:19.29 | 13:27.45 | 13:35.77
2024 | 13:13.66 | 13:21.68 | 13:29.86 | 13:38.21
2025 | 13:02.00 | 13:09.90 | 13:17.96 | 13:26.19

Fair point. The 1% adjusted times in the 2020s are about 2.5 seconds slower on average than the non-adjusted times in the 2000s; same compared to the 1990s. Those differences are driven a ton by El Guerrouj. He's ran 3 out of 6 top times in the 1990s and 6 out of 12 of the top times in the 2000s. Only Ingebrigtsen ran multiple top times in the 2020s (3 out of 13).

Decade | Count | Average | 1% Adj | 2% Adj | 3% Adj
------------------------------------------------------
1990s | 6 | 3:27.32 | 3:27.32 | 3:27.32 | 3:27.32
2000s | 12 | 3:27.49 | 3:27.49 | 3:27.49 | 3:27.49
2010s | 8 | 3:28.25 | 3:28.25 | 3:28.25 | 3:28.25
2020s | 13 | 3:27.95 | 3:30.05 | 3:32.20 | 3:34.38

even at 1%, he's still slower than Mo's PB who wasn't a miler. More like 0.5% if at all at the 1500m.

So put up prize money for a PR (or a certain time) in the traditional spikes and the athletes will come. The shoe companies will be happy. Letsrun could even do this on a small scale if they wanted to.

So my comment with almost identical wording as this one gets deleted but this stays up. Mods are biased.

I don't know what I was "wrong" about. I said what if we apply 1%, 2%, or 3% penalties to 1500 meter times after 2019? A 1% penalty turns a 3:28 super spike runner into a 3:30 traditional lightweight spike runner. In Ingebrigtsen's case, it turns his 3:26 high into a 3:28 high. Barely half a second per lap in both cases. Is that so crazy? Do we not think these shoes can do that? They're basically spring systems.

Mine was deleted for questioning the intelligence of anyone who believes the spikes make this much of an impact lol. Jakob being slower than Mo is beyond absurd but that’s where the super spike discussion is at these days.

There’s no such thing as super spikes, there’s such thing as super shoes for roads, but there has been no real evidence of improvement at the highest level due to new spikes. Hence why the times you listed make no sense.

I'm going to reply to my own post on this one--do this for a meet after NCAAs for the guys who didn't make it. You'd get tons of people who would do it and it's at a high enough level with runners with enough of a (no pun intended) track record to see how the spikes affect their times. They'd be right around peak shape. Make it happen, letsrun.com! Would drive traffic to the site.

Oh, man, you’re gonna get all the bouncy-shoe apologists upset. Oh, how the tables have turned. Look who’s yelling at clouds now.

Calm down folks, it’s just people running in circles.