Former marathon star Rob de Castella calls Vaporflys "ludicrous – it definitely needs to be addressed."

ftards generation wrote:

LoneStarXC wrote:

Lol, my thoughts exactly. He’s upset that so many people are running faster times than his, in part, due to the shoes. Boing boing!

Lol. And in 20 years you two will throw a massive tantrum because someone is using a shoe with an ultra bouncy mechanism that propels the average runner to 2 hours flat, and top marathoners down to 45 minutes.

That would be ridiculous. I highly doubt that shoe tech will ever be able to advance to that point, but we’ll see what Nike comes up with next, lol. ?

I never meant to say that de Castella’s complaints were unjustified, I too, would be upset if I were in his situation, watching as hundreds of runners bounced past my fastest times. And I have been for a VF ban since the day those pogo shoes came out. I wonder, though, if de Castella were running today, would he still call for them to be banned? My guess is that he would be bouncing along the road in his own pair of trampoline shoes.

No, Deek is a die hard Adidas man...always has been. The comments make even more sense when you consider that.

Secondly, the Deek training program is obsolete. Don't blame the shoes. Steve Jones ran hard in training. He didn't look for excuses.

tres stripes in Sydney wrote:

No, Deek is a die hard Adidas man...always has been. The comments make even more sense when you consider that.

He was an Adidas man while they were paying him to be an Adidas man, then they stopped paying him, but for a while he kept wearing the Adidas stuff he still had, I mean, why pay for something else.

Late one night he had a phone call from Sebastian Coe, who had just started working for Mizuno, he was a offered a contract, a few weeks later Deek was wearing Mizuno. I think after that no more contracts were forthcoming from anywhere, but can't be sure, it was a long time ago.

So hasn't always been an Adidas man and I'm guessing if he was running today he'd wear whatever he was getting paid the best dollar to wear and whatever was within the rules. Can't blame him or anyone else for that.

The 10k world champion that year was Alberto Cova, he has a PR of 27:37. He wouldn't even make the olympics anymore. People have gotten faster and he's just using the 4% as an excuse to why his times would be crap today. Nike is genius in their marketing to get this many people to believe their shoes make you run faster. Rob was slow comparatively in 5k and 10k to today's standards, he goes on to run 2:08. What happens when you take 12:37- 12:46 5k guys and make them run the marathon several years later? They run 2:01-2:03 range.

fkonfkoff wrote:

Haha. wrote:

I know Rob well, he'll be having a good laugh at that post.

Don’t take it too seriously, just joking around!

Deek is correct - the exact same thing happened in swimming with the performance-enhancing polyurethane super suits, which enhanced buoyancy and reduced fatigue. They were banned (in 2010 by FINA), because they were providing an obvious and truly massive advantage purely down to technological advancement - 100+ world records went down just after they were introduced. The vaporfly shoe is analagous to these swimming suits that were banned; having springs on your feet is not what it should be about, or we'd be pogosticking around; eventually there'd be a pogostick shoe that will allow for a 10 metre stride length. Once a shoe is providing more than a cushion and support, and an obvious advantage, it needs to go. Otherwise, it becomes a technological race, rather than an athletic one. Any 'world records' in a shoe like this needs to be scrubbed.

I admired Deek in early 80's , tough marathoner, "legs like tree trunks", and recently got to meet him and work with him at his Indigenous Marathon Foundation events. Awesome guy who always has time for others.

I have signed copy of one of his books, signed in 2001 when he was walking his dog past a marathon finish area after I had done a marathon.

He has a degree in sports science and was heading Institute of Sport at one stage, IIRC...

....that said, he has a short memory. He raced in the best shoes available at the time, be they waffle shoes or whatever....an improvement on what was before.

Why?

Because running is a very inefficient form of locomotion, and improvements in shoe technology has also resulted in less energy loss

Even with the vapourflys, the energy loss at each contact phase, is still nowhere near zero.

This is not something like an engine pushing you, someone carrying you, it is just a loss of less energy, like shoes have always done.

Yes it has been a huge incremental step, if figures of 2 to 4% are believed, but it is still not an outside force making you faster, but a contact enhancement making you 'less slower'.

The shoes Deek wore for his fastest races were actually the most basic racing flat ever. They weren't doing much but protecting his feet from the road.

They weren't even supporting his wild pronation.

Better than Clayton's shoes.

https://busstoprunners.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/derek-clayton-pic.jpg

He told it like it is, no commercial bs for those personally tied to Nike or to pr's they want to have.

And Clayton's were better than Ron Hill's:

https://imgur.com/a/9GNoAIU

Interestingly, or not, the world record for a mile on a pogo stick is actually only 7:40. But it gives you sick stride length.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoBUGm7goTQ

The Reek of Deek wrote:

The shoes Deek wore for his fastest races were actually the most basic racing flat ever. They weren't doing much but protecting his feet from the road.

They weren't even supporting his wild pronation.

They were better than mine at the time...and what pronation, the bloke did 200km/wk of hard running, you don't do that with any pronation

Haha. wrote:

fkonfkoff wrote:

Don’t take it too seriously, just joking around!

I pointed it out to him, he said tell the arsehole who posted it "less of the old".

Ehhh....I really couldn’t say if he were 18 or 81. Either way, whining won’t bring back the glory days and Vapes are here to stay.

I am Sam wrote:

The Reek of Deek wrote:

The shoes Deek wore for his fastest races were actually the most basic racing flat ever. They weren't doing much but protecting his feet from the road.

They weren't even supporting his wild pronation.

They were better than mine at the time...and what pronation, the bloke did 200km/wk of hard running, you don't do that with any pronation

This pronation:

fkonfkoff wrote:

Haha. wrote:

I pointed it out to him, he said tell the arsehole who posted it "less of the old".

Ehhh....I really couldn’t say if he were 18 or 81. Either way, whining won’t bring back the glory days and Vapes are here to stay.

So did you get the joke?

we should ban cell phones too.

With all these claims of unfair advantage, we should all just go back to running naked. That seems like the most logical conclusion. So the only true world record is when the Greeks ran in the Olympics naked?

You guys are worse than Fox News with your bias. These uninformed quotes from these “authorities” look good on the surface and feed the people that are convinced the Vaporflies need to be banned. But there is nothing to these quotes and the person has no clue. Do your job if you think you’re journalist or want to inform fans of athletics. Stop with the surface sensationalism. It’s lazy.