NY Times Article by Amby Burfoot About Nike’s Pogo Shoes

If Nike or anyone for that matter can build us shoes that make us run faster for a longer period of time why would we not embrace that? You say you can build me an exoskeleton suit that will allow me to run at a 10% greater top speed than before and 30% longer? Yeah I'll take two of them, thanks.

Does anyone know of a shoe, legal or illegal but not rolling with wheels or anything, that is faster than Nike's latest and greatest? Does the military have some super shoe that is better? If that is the absolute best shoe for running without wheels or some fueled propulsion system then that is what the best people in the world should be wearing. If some other shoe exists that is better, then they should wear those instead. Just because the running greats of the past didn't have access to them doesn't mean they shouldn't be used now that they are available.

Runners get too hung up on times and not enough on head to head results. It's all about who you beat and how often you beat them. If you ran 2:05 and were 50th best in the world that's nowhere near as good as someone who ran 2:07 and set a world record in the process.

I don't like the way Nike does business on a human level, but I love these shoes.

though i'm kind of against the idea of having lesser talents make a mockery of bill rogers et.al time back in the day,

most of the records in track and field are the result of elite talent plus full on cheating.

on the women's side, it's good talent plus ultra full on cheating.

so all the records are fake.

now you have the shoes,

they really have to reset the records for the new era.

i mean, they had EPO and there was no test. so how can you compare those records with today.

and you had the eastern BLOC women with enough testosterone for 10 men, and then some.

reset the record books for the new conditions.

as for the shoes, i'm interested if they can reduce injury, while making you go faster.

i say too bad for the old timers who want to stomp out progress.

move on old timers.

Good points!

Stack heights as whole have been increasing for a few years now, perfected by Hoka, followed by just about every brand. Stack height has little to do with the so called increased faster benefit outside of added protection.

Why is there not an uproar at Hoka for turning the market upside down with off the charts stack heights, giving runners more cushioning than ever before enhancing performances like never before on a mass scale. Look at the numbers, fastest growing running brand in recent history. We have a tendency to buy things that actually give a measurable benefit back.

Nike is the master of product launches, create elite performance product with a unique feature, launch with athletes , make it available to speciality retail, evolve the technology into training product reaching a broader market. All of this not available to the general market is just uneducated responses not knowing the normal product launch cycle. Yes all footwear companies do it across all product categories all the time, it’s just now we might have something that actually deserves the hype.

The truth is all of this nonsensical dialog will pass as better performance footwear become main stream in running, basketball etc.etc. This is a evolutionary changing point that all brands are working on with a number of reiterations that Nike just broke through a little earlier than the rest.

Olympic trials, games and competitions leading up we will see a flood of new technical shoes hitting the roads and track.

Love the fact that nobody mentions the 'shoes' when athletes have a bad day. If the performance differences are to be believed are we really saying Mo ran 2:12/2:13 at Chicago? Even on his worst day I'm pretty sure he could have run that wearing office shoes. Nike seem to sponsor every A/B/C level East African road runner, so they swamp the head of most marathon fields and it fuels the 'myth', or at least exaggerates the benefits.

I might be an old guy, but you are an idiot. Amby Burfoot is no clown; rather, he is one of the most influential runner writers of his era. You deride his winning time at Boston way back in 1968 (which by the way was 2:22 on a hot day), but fail to note that he ran a PR of 2:14 at Fukuoka that very same year, one second off the American record at the time. He has been inducted into the National Distance Running Hall of Fame and his racing accomplishments include two six place finishes at the NCAA University Division Cross Country Championships (not bad for a runner from little old Wesleyan University), two Olympic Trials marathons, 57 straight finishes and nine wins at the classic Thanksgiving Manchester Road Race, a finish at the 55 mile Comrades Marathon, 24-hour races, and the fact that at age 73 he is still racing. Amby Burfoot does not need to write, say, or do anything to stay relevant, but apparently you need to mock the name and legacy of a man whose accomplishments you will never approach in order to feel relevant yourself. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen (look it up): I've trained with Amby Burfoot. I know Amby Burfoot. Amby Burfoot is a friend of mine. Sir, you're no Amby Burfoot.

I might be an old guy, but you are an idiot. Amby Burfoot is no clown; rather, he is one of the most influential runner writers of his era. You deride his winning time at Boston way back in 1968 (which by the way was 2:22 on a hot day), but fail to note that he ran a PR of 2:14 at Fukuoka that very same year, one second off the American record at the time. He has been inducted into the National Distance Running Hall of Fame and his racing accomplishments include two six place finishes at the NCAA University Division Cross Country Championships (not bad for a runner from little old Wesleyan University), two Olympic Trials marathons, 57 straight finishes and nine wins at the classic Thanksgiving Manchester Road Race, a finish at the 55 mile Comrades Marathon, 24-hour races, and the fact that at age 73 he is still racing. Amby Burfoot does not need to write, say, or do anything to stay relevant, but apparently you need to mock the name and legacy of a man whose accomplishments you will never approach in order to feel relevant yourself. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen (look it up): I've trained with Amby Burfoot. I know Amby Burfoot. Amby Burfoot is a friend of mine. Sir, you're no Amby Burfoot.

Scarlet Turkey wrote:

Amby Burfoot is no clown; rather, he is one of the most influential runner writers of his era.

How much did Nike pay him to write such hyperbole?

Can you share some of Amby Burfoot's biomechanics and material design qualifications?

What does his shoe design qualifications have to do with this? He reported on a recent epic running achievement which was accomplished in shoes that are different than any before, and he, like many others in the running community, is asking the question "How much does the shoe impact the improved performance?" Amby is a reporter and a commentator on our sport. He is an expert in his field, and his reputation as a writer and reporter is indisputable. That is all the qualifications he needs to have to write a provocative and thoughtful column like this in the New York Times. I'm curious as to your qualifications and the other negative nellies attempting to sully a good man's name - Have you ever broken 3 Hours for a marathon? Ever broken 4 hours? Ever even run a marathon? My guess is probably not, as you are too busy hiding behind your anonymity as you troll the LetsRun message boards to have done the hard work required to accomplish something as difficult as that.

- Jim Butler

Make the sport great again wrote:

cinder/dirt tracks wrote:

If you are striving for fairness in athletics, Bobby Morrow, Charles Jenkins, Tom Courtney, Ron Delany and Vladimir Kuts are saying it was unfair to go to synthetic tracks from cinder/dirt tracks.

And cinder tracks should absolutely be brought back and enforced. Will be better for the environment and boost the economy as well.

What was is the primary reason that nobody installs cinder tracks? Rubber tracks are lower maintenance? I would think that if we made cinder tracks the standard, then running tracks would be more prevalent, due to the lower cost of installation.