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For me, running is meant to be technology free
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But here is the fundamental issue with this - the sport or act of running hasn't been technology free ever since a shoe was first made. The first shoe was technology - it was a technology that protected the foot from being f%$ked up by the surfaces humans run on.
So I'm sorry but this statement is completely void and has been for many many decades. I can even make a case that what we see now isn't even the largest jump in footwear technology for the sport of running - the case I gave above is.
At some point the first shoes for running (in whatever form they were) were invented and used by somebody. Those shoes probably enabled somebody to complete a distance previously impossible due to cumulative damage caused over a distance by running without shoes. These exact same jumps happened when the cushioning technologies like rubber, PU or EVA were found and introduced - again arguably with way larger performance benefits than "4%".
The big difference we have no are labs that quantify these benefits, "experts" that have a plethora of arbitrary takes on these results and the internet which perpetuates and exacerbates furor and panic surrounding these takes.
So unless you suggest we all go back to barefoot running on grass, you need to live and accept shoes like the 4/NXT/Alpha% and just embrace them for fundamentally what they are - no different on a first principal level to what we have seen before.