January 26, 2020

"I’ve spent a decade chasing a sub-three-hour marathon. How much do I want it? Enough to let technology take some of the credit?"

Wonders Jamie Doward in "Vaporfly shoes will help me reach my marathon dream. Should I use them?/After years of trying to beat the three-hour barrier, new technology could get me there. Or is that cheating?"
Bryce Dyer, a sports technologist and specialist in product design at Bournemouth University, told Reuters they were “the equivalent of bringing a gun to a knife fight”. Others draw comparisons with Speedo’s controversial LZR swimsuit, which helped competitors break a host of world records in the pool before being banned.

The backlash against the shoes began in running forums almost immediately after their launch. “Like putting springs on your feet,” one person said. “Should be banned.”

35 comments:

Lucid-Ideas said...

The runner who brought news of the victory at Marathon supposedly died. Unless they die they're all cheating.

rehajm said...

I’ve tried them and they’re superior to other options but aren’t all shoes a form of assist device?

Maybe we can limit the coefficient of restitution like we do in golf...

JAORE said...

Limit their use to those proven to have XX chromosomes.

gilbar said...

The backlash against the shoes began in running forums almost immediately after their launch. “Like putting springs on your feet,”

if we start allowing this sort of thing, NEXT THING YOU KNOW, we'll be having Guys competing in Girl's events! Oh, wait, never mind!

rcocean said...

Can't everyone wear them? So why ban them?

Also, shoes that allow you to run the Marathon 10 minutes faster, say 190 vs. 180 is a 5% advantage. Not exactly revolutionary.

gilbar said...

back in High School, when i was The SLOWEST member of the Hoffman High Cross Country Team,
i was Super impressed how much faster a runner (even The SLOWEST runner) would be running in cleats and race clothes, rather than regular sneakers and sweats.

Didn't Kenyans use to run barefoot? Maybe that should be a requirement? (that and proper chromosomes)

wild chicken said...

I wonder if they're good for elderly mall-walkers.

Wondering for a friend of course.

Narayanan said...

... The greatest marathon runner of all time, Eliud Kipchoge, used a variant of the Vaporfly when he ran his sub-two-hour marathon last year. The next day, Brigid Kosgei ran 2:14.04 at the Chicago marathon in a pair of modified Vaporflys, taking 81 seconds off Paula Radcliffe’s 16-year-old world record...
______&&&&&&&
All the agonizing over
Sub-3hour is item on his bucket list

Fernandinande said...

“the equivalent of bringing a gun to a knife fight”.

Saying that is like bringing a moron to a discussion. Oh, it's The Guardian.


The most unfair thing in sports is different levels of talent.

The next most unfair thing in sports is different levels of practicing.

Therefore talent and practicing should be banned.

Fernandinande said...

Actually the most unfair thing is sports is that sports don't really matter, nor does it matter how you play the game because it's just a game.

dbp said...

At some point there will be jumping stilts that are light enough to create a very clear-cut advantage and so some kind of regulation will need to be made for racing.

My trick for getting a little speed boost in marathons is to wear the kind of racing flats one might wear for a 5K. They are very light, which helps and they tend to have very little padding and it is stiff. Most runners I've seen at marathons wear nice spongy training shoes, in the perfectly reasonable assumption that their joints will be in for a pounding if they wear something lighter. The drawback is that all the padding is absorbing some of the runner's energy. I feel like a lighter shoe makes me run more smoothly for a longer time before I get so tired that I start to plod. Anyway, I never ran so many marathons that I had a hard time recovering from one before the next one. The closest two were about 6 months apart.

Ice Nine said...

I have two words for you:
fiberglass
pole

Next subject...

Wince said...

Flubber?

Mid-Life Lawyer said...

Diet has improved. Clothing has improved. Athletes now get more scientific testing done and training regimens have improved. Shoes have improved.

Most of the negative talk I have heard about the shoes is directed toward athletes the speaker/writer doesn't like using them so this runner is cheating. If they like a runner who is using the shoes, well then that runner is just trying to keep up so it's okay. Also, many in the running community like to bash Nike and Nike came up with the Vaporfly so, naturally, when the big successful corporation comes up with the innovation, it's evil. A legitimate criticism is that only some athletes had access to the shoes when they were prototypes and so those runners did have an unfair advantage in races when all runners could not chose the shoes. Now that they are available to the public, that advantage has been erased.

tim in vermont said...

It’s like using a trampoline to dunk a basketball.

tim in vermont said...

It’s frowned upon to fix your slice by putting chapstick on the face of your driver, but who hasn’t suggested this to a friend who keeps hitting balls into the woods, or through the screen rooms of the houses by the golf course?

tim in vermont said...

It means “I give up."

James K said...

fiberglass
pole


A few more:

graphite/titanium/fiberglass
tennis racket

Unlike shoes, which just add speed, the new rackets changed the nature of the game, and not necessarily for the better.

John henry said...

OUR PRESIDENT HAS BEEN IMPEACHED AND IS FIGHTING FOR HIS POLITICAL LIFE

AND YOU ARE WORRIED ABOUT SHOES?

WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!

GET YOUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT!!!

John Henry

Narayanan said...

Blogger Aunty Trump said...
It’s like using a trampoline to dunk a basketball
_________

https://twitter.com/prayingmedic/status/1220122671733600256?s=20

Yancey Ward said...

Doward should just use rollerskates.

Lurker21 said...

""I’ve spent a decade chasing a sub-three-hour marathon. How much do I want it? Enough to let technology take some of the credit?""

So many things about that headline puzzled me, since I assumed the three-hour-sub-marathon had something to do with watching Tom Clancy movies and wondered why it would be so short.

Beasts of England said...

I highly recommend On Cloudswift running shoes. I’m three months into my first pair and the reduction in bodily wear and tear is pronounced.

Scott said...

Shades of Spring-Heeled Jack!

Kevin said...

So, a company whose job it is to engineer and sell athletic shoes specialized towards very specific sports activities, engineered and sold a shoe specialized towards a very specific sports activity.

The deuce you say! What, did we lose a war??

Michael said...

Beasts of England
OnClouds will make your feet and knees throw a party. I don’t run in them but wear them as a casual shoe. NB for running.

rhhardin said...

They're impedance matchers. They match your choice of force and speed to the task at hand. If canoe races were powered by teaspoons, the guy with the paddle wins: greater force and less speed matches the arm better.

Leland said...

I'm with Gilbar and rocean. I know cleats help track runners go faster and that seems a more unnatural advantage than the plate of the shoe. And if anyone can use them, what's the purpose of banning? [I suspect because not everyone can MAKE them, like perhaps the EU]

Alas, here's Runner's World take: "Banning Kipchoge’s Shoes Is the Dumbest Take in Running Right Now"

chuck said...

Reminds me of the turbine kerfuffle in the Indy 500. I thought the restrictions then made it a race for antiques rather than a showcase for new technology.

Unknown said...

What an asinine position. We runners are always using new running shoe technology. I compare the shoes I wear now to the shoes I wore in the mid-80s. Do I have to wear the same shoes that guys wore back in the`20s?

And think about golf. Compare the clubs &balls that golfers use today to those used by Jones, Hogan, Snead, etc Or even the clubs Nicklaus & Palmer used in the 1960s. Wood etc.

Technological change is a fact of life.

Beasts of England said...

’I don’t run in them but wear them as a casual shoe.’

I wear them around the house, as well. I hate to take them off!! :)

Narayanan said...

Sub 2hour marathon run achieved by Kenyan.

Carping by "White Supremacist" no hoper for sub 3hour run!

What a country and world.

Big Mike said...

Didn’t the original Nike running shoes invented by Bill Bowerman with Steve Prefontaine in mind confer snow advantage on the wearer? Should Nike have bee barred at the very outset?

Freeman Hunt said...

I think the ancient Greeks had the right idea with the Olympics. Everyone should compete nude.

Freeman Hunt said...

Otherwise, people break records, and one thinks, "Meh." What does any of that really mean in the midst of the modern sports tech arms race.