Ben Barrows on 4%

Ben, your notion of fairness is noble, but impractical and tedious, and also, in my opinion, quite limited. Why should the factor of proximity of start and finish be solely emphasized and hilliness be disregarded? Clearly a hilly course is more difficult than a flat one if other conditions are the same. To the very least, hilliness should be added in judging "fairness"

There's no absolute fairness in the Marathon. Every course is different, every race day is different. Lots of factors affecting performance, and more importantly, these facts are public, and their effects rather well known. People take these factors into consideration. The pursuit for unrealistic fairness or "pureness" is unnecessary, and unrewarding (it doesn't deserve to be rewarded in my opinion). Just run the races and accept that your time will be impacted by various factors outside of your control, but it's still fair in that these factors affects everyone. Somebody are lucky but that's how sports are.

As to the Vaporfly, it's just one of the technologies that make people run faster. Other shoes may also provide advantage, perhaps to a lesser degree. Other techs, such as nutrition, apparel, may also contribute to better performance. I personally find that I don't benefit much from fueling mid-race, shall I claim that people who do is having an unfair advantage over me? I find caffeine isn't doing anything except upsetting my stomach, shall I claim people who enjoy the benefit of caffeine to have unfair advantage?

Vaporfly shoes are expensive, to the point some people can't afford one or unwilling to buy one, but not as expensive as hiring a coach. Shall I, not having a coach, claiming people shouldn't receive training help from coaches in the spirit of fairness?

I find training methods contributed to improved running ability tremendously, shall we handicap our running ability by not utilizing the most advanced training methods since they are not available to less informed people in the spirit of fairness? Shall we limit to run only 30 MPW since there are people who don't have time to run more, and we certainly don't want an unfair advantage over them?

Obviously, it's pointless to pursue this kind of "noble fairness". Just put in your best effort, take advantage of all the legal technologies, and perform, instead of putting a greater emphasis on claiming a supposed moral superiority.

Do any of these guys even lift? Smh.

One major limitation in this calculation is that one doesn't need to renew his/her kinetic energy every step he/she takes. A lot of that energy is preserved and the runner just need to overcome the resistance to preserve the speed. Thus, a more relevant value would be running power, that's the amount of energy the runner output per unit time to sustain running. That number divided by cadence will give the energy expenditure per step, and that should be the number compared to what the vaporfly offer.

Continuing my previous post. Running power is probably in the neighborhood of 300 watt (just a rough estimate), and cadence 3 steps per second. That gives about 100 joule per step.

Thus, giving the generous assumptions, vaporfly produces a 2.6 percent of energy return. But of course thit is very very generous indeed in that first, nobody can bend their feed like that, second, even if they do, not all that stored energy can contribute to overcoming running resistance.

More importantly, as long as your heel touches the ground at point in your step, it doesn't matter how much energy is stored by bending the shoe, because at the time your heel touches ground, the carbon plate is flat and stores no energy. What ever energy is stored by bending the shoe afterward, is not energy returned to you, but extra energy you spend. The fact that that energy is returned only means you didn't spend extra energy. For other shoes which are not so rigid, you won't spend that much energy bending it, so it doesn't matter they don't "return energy" like vaporfly in this fashion, since you didn't spend it in the first place.

Thus, energy can only be "returned" in this fashion if tip-toe the whole time, that way, the use the energy of your landing (gravity) to bend the shoe, and that energy is stored and then returned. And once again, at any point you allow your heel to touch ground, that stored energy is released and cannot be returned anymore.

Ben's notion of fairness is centered on times rather than what place he finishes even though the sport is the opposite. So his ideas of fairness are never going to make sense.

No matter how hilly or big of a tailwind or net downhill or point to point or hot or cold or whatever, people running in the same race are engaged in a perfectly fair challenge against each other. And no matter how similar two different races appear to be, it's never perfectly fair to compare them.

For the purpose of records, the sport does its best to create rules for legal record attempts so that different races can be compared. But comparing performances from different races isn't what the sport actually consists of. If you want to know who is better, you put athletes in the same race and see who wins.

So the only other reason that times matter is for the purpose of qualifying for a race, and while this is never perfectly fair when athletes are running different races to qualify, enough entries are typically allowed that anyone with a chance of actually winning the race will have ample opportunity to qualify. It's not a perfect system but it usually gets the job done of getting the correct athletes in the race.

Anyone who is just chasing a particular time as a goal must be at peace with the fact that some variables out of their control are going to help them or hurt them along the way. If Ben wants to control some of those variables, it makes sense. But he isn't really doing the sport in the way it's supposed to be done or in a way that makes sense. He's just taken an aspect of it and is using it for his own little personal challenge. It doesn't fit in with the sport as a whole.

Cheating handed on a plate said: is this a straight up joke or are you being serious?

I am most definitely serious.

I also confidently predicted that you wouldn't answer the question. care to try again?

cheers.

First OP was acted like an expert when it came to marathon training without ever training for one.

Now he's an expert on marathon courses, without ever running one.

Pay no attention to the marathon chickenhawk behind the video camera.

some thoughts wrote:

the marathon OTQ is much much easier than most (all?) OTQ's. What other event has 100 people at the trials? It's uncommon. Certainly no other Athletics events. So these marathon OTQ dreamers are already gaming the system with the abnormally low-hanging fruit that is the Marathon OTQ.

The marathon OTQ isn't actually easier than the OTQ for other events. The problem is that after college, there is no way for sub elites to run fast 5ks and 10ks on the track. The people who could be running OTQs for 5k and 10k end up going to the marathon because there are more opportunities to qualify for the marathon than for 5k and 10k.

cotton shirt wrote:

Cheating handed on a plate said: is this a straight up joke or are you being serious?

I am most definitely serious.

I also confidently predicted that you wouldn't answer the question. care to try again?

cheers.

I only didn't answer previous as I assumed that you had to be kidding making (in what now appears to be a state of completely lacking self awareness) a comment that you couldn't understand how watching a released coiled up shoe flying through the air like no other demonstrated that the shoe had an elastic potential unlike any other shoe.

THAT is the answer to you question. Although I still believe you must be playing the fool for some reason to claim you cannot understand how that hasn't been demonstrated.

My Dad taught me many years ago ( and I teach this to my daughter) The word FAIR is not to be used ...

nothing in life is FAIR and nothing ever will be .. and the more you try to make it FAIR the more UNFAIR it becomes.

I'm gonna leave this right here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X75Hm0scXns

Great discussion

runrincerepeat wrote:

My Dad taught me many years ago ( and I teach this to my daughter) The word FAIR is not to be used ...

nothing in life is FAIR and nothing ever will be .. and the more you try to make it FAIR the more UNFAIR it becomes.

The marathon trials standard should be sanctioned so that everyone must qualify on the exact same course, in the exact same weather conditions, at the same altitude, at the same time of day, with the exact same shoes, apparel, nutrition, and hair length. The standard should prohibit watches of any kind and all runners must be handicapped to a weight of 200 lbs. A qualifying performance should also be run solo so that there’s no unfair pacing or drafting benefit. I hereby refuse to qualify for the trials until USATF implements such a FAIR system.

angryjohnny wrote:

The marathon trials standard should be sanctioned so that everyone must qualify on the exact same course, in the exact same weather conditions, at the same altitude, at the same time of day, with the exact same shoes, apparel, nutrition, and hair length. The standard should prohibit watches of any kind and all runners must be handicapped to a weight of 200 lbs. A qualifying performance should also be run solo so that there’s no unfair pacing or drafting benefit. I hereby refuse to qualify for the trials until USATF implements such a FAIR system.

I would pay to see human NASCAR races.

OTQ standards will just get bumped to compensate for this technicological improvement

It's the definition of a.zeeo sum game. As.more individuals produce OTQs, the standard will tighten bringing us right back where we were.

Use the best readily available tools or suffer the handicap

New baseline wrote:

OTQ standards will just get bumped to compensate for this technicological improvement

It's the definition of a.zeeo sum game. As.more individuals produce OTQs, the standard will tighten bringing us right back where we were.

Use the best readily available tools or suffer the handicap

Don't waste your time; I pointed all this out on his youtube comments and he is like a piece of driftwood, hard, stubborn and inevitably going to succumb to the tide.

Cheating handed on a plate said: THAT is the answer to you question. Although I still believe you must be playing the fool for some reason to claim you cannot understand how that hasn't been demonstrated.

you have not answered the question.

so that you can understand where I'm coming from let us think not about running shoes but about oranges. an orange has a specific colour. an orange also has a quite definite taste. there is, however, no connection between the colour and the taste. they just happen to be two unrelated properties of oranges. an orange doesn't taste acidic "because" it is orange coloured, and it isn't coloured orange "because" it tastes acidic. the two properties are not connected or related in any way.

in exactly the same way, If I threw two running shoes into a pool and one floated a lot longer than the other, this would not tell us anything at all about any other properties the shoes might have. one might be a motion control shoe and one not, but it doesn't float longer "because" it is a motion control shoe, and it doesn't offer motion control "because" it floats longer. the two properties are unrelated in any way.

in exactly the same way, in tests it has been shown that the Nike Vaporfly 4% helps runners run faster. this is one property the shoe has. no one doubts that this is so.

in a video it has been demonstrated that the Nike Vaporfly 4% will flip higher off the ground than other running shoes when bent into a position it will not achieve in normal running. this is another property the shoe has.

these are two unrelated properties of that specific running shoe. the article in Outside magazine said that the guys who designed and built the shoes don't know how they make runners faster. that the guy who patented the metal plate in the shoe doesn't know why the shoe makes runners faster. that two independent studies of how the shoe is designed and made could not explain how the shoe makes runners faster. all these people say that they are unable to explain the property of the shoe that makes runners faster. and, since they are unable to explain this property, they would be unable to connect it to any other property the shoe has. they have no idea whether its "flippability" is related to running faster or not. they suspect it might be, but they don't really know. the direct quote from the magazine on the relevant part of the investigation is: "They’re not sure what’s going on."

you, however, claim that watching a video makes it immediately "obvious" that the property of flippping higher is directly connected to the property of running faster. none of the people quoted in Outside magazine would make that claim but you do, because to you it is sufficiently obvious that anyone who cannot see it is called "moronic" and a "chump," and, "lacking in self-awareness." but you have now had four opportunities to explain this connection and you haven't done it. you just obfuscate and prevaricate and resort to name calling, but explanation is entirely absent.

which means that you are in the position of claiming that something is so blatantly obvious that people who cannot see it get called names, but you are utterly unable to explain this obvious thing in any way. you don't have the vocabulary to explain what you think think should be "obvious" to everyone else. your entire line of reasoning is: there's the video, off you go.

and my whole point has been that you are merely making an assumption:

runners can run faster in the shoe, AND it flips higher than other shoes, THEREFORE these two properties are related.

but, since the guys who designed and built the shoe cannot see that connection, I instead conclude that there is no logical explanation that can connect those two properties of the shoe, and therefore no valid reason to make the same assumption as you, and that you will never explain it, because you can not, because it does not exist.

you are the guy explaining to the world's press that you saw the Loch Ness Monster. you have a video to prove it. you are utterly convinced that you are right and blithely unaware that no one else takes anything you say seriously.

cheers.

Here’s the thing, Ben:

No true champion with solid character and integrity would come on Letsrun and post what you posted. You have no real future as a runner.

But after reading these all of these comments, you already know this in your heart. Bummer.

Happy new year.

That's like, your opinion, man.

Who’s Len Burrows?