Runners need not eschew high-tech new shoes

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This article was published 08/02/2020 (2066 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One day last July, I plunked down $365 for a pair of neon green running shoes. It’s unlikely I’ll wear them more than a dozen times.

If that makes me crazy, much of the rest of the running world is also nuts. You see, we just want to run faster.

So much so that the shoes, known as Nike Vaporflys, are flying off the shelves and causing controversy at races everywhere.

Last week World Athletics, the governing body for track and field, ruled the Vaporfly shoes are legal and can be used in international competitions such as the Olympics. World Athletics also warned there is evidence that the integrity of the sport might be threatened by new shoe technology.

To sum up: running shoes are now so advanced that they are threatening running.

But does a better running shoe, short of one that is battery-powered, really make a difference?

Sure, it makes me feel a little edgy just owning a pair — or as edgy as a 59-year-old recreational runner can feel.

One thing they don’t make me feel is any faster.

Nike markets the shoes as helping to improve performance by at least four per cent. They have thick, ultra-light, foam soles and a carbon plate inside the shoe to provide an easy landing and springy takeoff for your foot.

Elite athletes wearing the shoes have run the fastest times ever in the marathon in the past couple of years. Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge wore Vaporflys when he ran a marathon in less than two hours.

But it’s impossible to separate the shoes from the runner. The elite, Nike-sponsored athletes who have broken records are among the best trained distance runners the world has ever seen. Nike pours resources into them, providing the most advanced training facilities, coaching and medical attention. Oddly, the shoes are getting all the credit.

Kipchoge set his record on a controlled course. His pace was set by laser lights flashing in front of him. He was surrounded by other elite runners, allowing him to draft behind a human wind block.

Most of us run without this help. Still, late last year the New York Times analyzed data from hundreds of thousands of race results and concluded that runners wearing Vaporflys ran four to five per cent faster than a runner wearing an average shoe and two to three per cent faster than runners in other elite competition shoes.

The Times concluded the difference was not explained by faster runners choosing to wear the shoes, by runners choosing to wear them in easier races or by runners switching to the shoes after running more training miles.

“In a race between two marathoners of the same ability, a runner wearing these shoes would have a significant advantage over a competitor not wearing them.”

Personally, I’m not convinced. There are so many variables in distance running — your training, the course, the weather, the competition — that isolating the impact of shoes is difficult.

I spent $365 on a pair of Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next% shoes. I wore them to a fast time — for me — in a 10-kilometre race. But it was a perfect day for weather, I had been training well and I felt great. Then I checked my records and noticed I had run a faster time three years earlier in a pair of Adidas.

I wore the Vaporflys in a half marathon shortly after that and also had a good time — but it was a minute slower than I ran a couple of years earlier at the Manitoba Marathon wearing those same Adidas.

The third and only other time I wore them, I ran the Chicago Marathon. I finished two minutes faster than in Toronto a year earlier. That’s about one per cent faster. But Chicago is known as a fast, flat marathon course, the weather was perfect, and I trained more.

Still, every runner holds out hope of going faster and yes, I’ll be wearing my Vaporflys again.

Bob Cox is publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press.