Can the owners of this site finally stop crying about/doing free advertisment for the Vaporfly all day long?

The only reason I got VF's is that I kept reading about it and finally the curiosity got the best of me. There goes a week's salary, all into Nike's pocket.

They constantly do the same thing with drugs, which I have pointed out from the very beginning.

There is STILL no evidence that drugs are necessary to run one's best times, and the same for shoes with nylon in them.

These are simply marketing plots to sell more drugs and shoes, and that's why they keep doing them constantly.

I agree, there's definitely a 'Bannister' effect taking place too - a guy at work said if it's not the shoes, why are there more quicker times (don't get me wrong, Nike has designed a great shoe that perhaps loses less energy than it's rivals) - but it seems you've now got pacers at every major City marathon going out at 60:30/61:00 half marathon pace, so of course you'll get quicker times (it would have been considered suicidal not that long ago and now it's the norm).

I don't buy that, marketing ploys get caught pretty quickly these days (yeah it's healthy to be skeptical).

The shoes according to every single study (and my own personal experience) done by professionals and amateurs have proved to be beneficial.

rojo wrote:

People, you are correct that one can manipulate stats to make everything look crazy. But come on, only an idiot would deny that the marathon times have gotten ridiculous in the last year plus.

rojo has gotten ridiculous in the last several decades plus

Mencken1976 wrote:

I don't buy that, marketing ploys get caught pretty quickly these days (yeah it's healthy to be skeptical).

If that were true, people wouldn't still be getting toxic and dangerous vaccinations.

The shoes according to every single study (and my own personal experience) done by professionals and amateurs have proved to be beneficial.

Most shoes are considered to be beneficial, or people wouldn't be wearing them.

However, the ridiculous claims that they are magic shoes are absurd.

I'm not so sure, an elite female triathlete I know that takes part in a local 5k series, has for years run no faster than 16:45 in Adidas. Then she switched to Vaporfly Next%s and boom 16:20s week in week out and I can't stand Nike. Though there may be other models in the pipeline that are just as good that aren't getting coverage. There shows are faster.

Subway Surfers wrote:

I'm not so sure, an elite female triathlete I know that takes part in a local 5k series, has for years run no faster than 16:45 in Adidas. Then she switched to Vaporfly Next%s and boom 16:20s week in week out and I can't stand Nike. Though there may be other models in the pipeline that are just as good that aren't getting coverage. There shows are faster.

Shoes were faster in the 1970s before the RW shoe rankings, from whence shoes were thereafter brutalized with foam, all sorts of gimmicks, and advertisements to make more $$$ - and the shoes kept getting worse, harder to train and run fast in, also precipitating more injuries.

Making simple shoes that are much faster than what's been around for the last few decades should not be so difficult to accomplish.

nojos wrote:

rojo wrote:

People, you are correct that one can manipulate stats to make everything look crazy. But come on, only an idiot would deny that the marathon times have gotten ridiculous in the last year plus.

rojo has gotten ridiculous in the last several decades plus

in 2018, there were 50 sub 2:06 marathons, same number as in 2012. In 2019 there were 64 - a significant increase but hardly "ridiculous."

Now that the entire Dubai field has failed to crack 2:06, 2020 is almost guaranteed to have fewer than 64, maybe fewer than 50, whether any shoes get banned or not.

Subway Surfers wrote:

There shows are faster.

WTF?

DC Wonk wrote:

As I've said before, ultimately it will be deduced that the main driver for any positive effects of the VF are due to a combination of belief (people expect to run faster in VF), hype, and simply the reduction of leg fatigue due to the soft cushion.

Absolutely staggered to believe that anyone with any insight going down as low as club running can believe that.

For hobbyjoggers a couple of years in maybe you could claim that. But to suggest that hardened club runners who have been running mileage for years can suddenly drop a couple of minutes due to hype, placebo effect and soft cushioning is absolutely hilarious.

rojo wrote:

The answer is simple. These shoes are the grandchildren of the 2016 Olympic shoes which were against the rules in my opinion and yet the race hasn't been invalidated.

Has anyone actually verified that 4th place Ghebrslassie wasn’t offered the opportunity to wear the vaporfly? He was the defending world champion at the time after all. Seems strange Nike would provide them to Lilisa (who had run well 2010-2012, but not leading up to 2016) and not Ghebrslassie. Look at the pictures. There are a bunch of guys I’ve never heard of wearing vaporflys, but they didn’t offer them to the defending world champion who just finished 5th London? He wore the Zoom Streak 3, a shoe that had been out of production for several years at that point, so it may have just been his personal preference to continue with the shoe he was familiar with rather than switch. If he had the opportunity to wear the vaporfly and turned it down, I’m less sympathetic (though he may not have realized the advantage at the time; he wore them when he won New York a few months later). Not saying this is true, but something I’d like to know.

vf user wrote:

The only reason I got VF's is that I kept reading about it and finally the curiosity got the best of me. There goes a week's salary, all into Nike's pocket.

I wasn’t planning on buying the shoes, but a friend had the wrong sizes delivered and couldn’t return them, and offered me a pair at an insanely low price that I couldn’t refuse. So here I am about to boing boing my way through a tempo.

All your records are belong to us. I will vaporize.

Why is nobody talking about the introduction of Maurten in 2016? If you remember it was the "secret new fuel" Bekele was training with when he ran 2:03:03 in 2016. According to their site the last 24 World Major Marathon winners use this product. Kipchoge uses the product. Are we ignoring a huge component of performance improvement which is intra race nutrition?

Do rojo/wejo at least admit that one of the effects of the focus on VFs on this site is to sell a heck of a lot of shoes for Nike? Whatever happens at the pro level, this site is clearly ratcheting up interest at all levels below the top. I hope they do have a backdoor deal with Nike, otherwise they are just advertising for free. These two are astute so I’d just like them to acknowledge this...they may already have done so. If there is no deal with Nike, why are they throwing away the opportunity? Full disclosure, I enjoy this site a great deal and read many of the VF articles.

I served my country bravely. And Rojo? He spends his days on the internet writing about black people and vaporflys.

Bump.

It seems that Rojo sadly got motivated by this thread to do exactly the opposite of what the thread title suggests.

PS: 85% of all world major podium finishers wearing a version of the Vaporfly actually is what one would expect considering the fact that already 90+% of all elite Africans are sponsored by Nike (which is a fact a running nerd like rojo should have noticed by know, but of course chooses not to mention).