Not Carbon wrote:
Know what you're talking about. wrote:
Asics Metaracer WITH carbon plate in Sara's Berlin shoes. Fact.
Asics Metaracer WITH carbon plate in Frodeno's Ironman course recurs. Fact.
Asics Metaracer WITH carbon plate in Emma Bates fir 4th place, fastest time, and top American at Chicago. Fact.
Having actually seen the shoes in person, it is not a carbon plate. It is a very stiff plastic. The shoe is super stiff, but if you bend the shoe it doesn't spring back like a Vaporfly does.
I sweat to god the amount of uninformed idiots on this board never ceases to amaze me. "The shoe is super stiff, but if you bend the shoe it doesn't spring back like a Vaporfly does."
And what exactly does that mean. Clearly you have bent a Vaporfly then correct? Can you remember exactly how you did it? I'm guessing a hand grabbing the heel and one grabbing the toe. Then you probably rotated your hands inwards in the same fashion that you would to snap a piece of wood or bend a steel pipe right? The shoe flexed in the dead center and then "sprung" back right?
Now (if your brain can do this) think about running and the foot and shoe together and ask yourself if this scenario can ever possibly happen? Ask yourself if the shoe can possible get bent in this fashion, in this position in order for it to "spring back". Even if you grabbed a Vaporfly and put the forefoot on a table, tilted the shoe to almost perpendicular with the table and then pushed down with enough force to to actually flex it enough for it to flex enough to load and elastically rebound, does this scenario seem like it happens when you run?
USE YOUR FREAKING BRAIN dude (and everyone else including this idiot Ryan Hall claiming "it's a spring"). The shoes economy benefit is a combination of the stiff plate optimizing force transfer and the lever lengthening of the foot, the shape of it that enables 10mm of rear to forefoot drop which reduces fatigue on knee and hips due to promoting and aiding better biomechanics and the foam which is lightweight, perfectly cushioned and has a nice proprioceptive "bounce" to it. The 4, 5, whatever % better "return" is not about the shoe generating anything (like "spring back") it's about limiting loss.
Don't believe me - go read Ross Tuckers blog where he speaks exclusively on "economy benefit" of these shoes. What Nike is doing is making their footwear more energy "economical" which means they are creating shoes that create scenarios where athletes limit losses - not receive phantom gains.
And btw, good on them for that. What other companies are doing is no different - they are simply doing it better than anyone else and its not secret why - they invest the most and give the most f%$ks. Pretty simple really.
