What will spikes look like in thirty years? looking at spikes from thirty years ago things have changed a lot, i dont know if there is that much room, but i guess even milers to victories was a jump.
What will spikes look like in thirty years? looking at spikes from thirty years ago things have changed a lot, i dont know if there is that much room, but i guess even milers to victories was a jump.
That's a great question. Just the other day my friend and I were talking about how cool it would be to get training shoes, racing flats, and spikes and go back to 9th grade (36 years ago). Shoes were nothing back then and both of us were always injured. Despte that we were 2:00 800 (880) runners.
What if we could train consistently and race on a synthetic track in modern spikes?
runn wrote:
That's a great question. Just the other day my friend and I were talking about how cool it would be to get training shoes, racing flats, and spikes and go back to 9th grade (36 years ago). Shoes were nothing back then and both of us were always injured. Despte that we were 2:00 800 (880) runners.
What if we could train consistently and race on a synthetic track in modern spikes?
You may have gotten hurt even more and run about the same.
Shoes were just fine back then (Nike was growing leaps and bounds and the Nike waffle trainers were pretty good shoes, simple with no bells and whistles, Adidas had great spikes and Puma were still ok). Today's spikes are ok, but think back to the Adidas blue and white 9.9 and tell me they were not good. I don't remember the distance spikes as well, but Adidas always had good quality. Tiger shoes were pretty flimsy and the old New Balance ripple shoes were like wearing gloves (certainly a better minimalistic shoe than any on the market today with their great no seam leather uppers).
Today's training shoes, for the most part, are overbuilt, in my opinion. They are also too heavy and provide to little flexibility for proper foot movement.
Injuries are mainly caused by poor structure of the body and or poor mechanics so not sure if you wouldn't still get hurt with today's shoes and tracks. Although, the all weather tracks that were just being developed then, such as the grasstex and rubberized asphalt tracks, were harder than most anything today. Running on decent cinder tracks, if taken care of, was actually still a better alternative, except on meet days. In fact, they were quite comfortable on the legs. The clay tracks out west were also pretty good to run on, just a bit harder on the legs.