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Super Shoes Don’t Make You Any Faster, It Turns Out

As soon as you take them off, you're back to your regular speed.

This year at the Houston Half Marathon, Conner Mantz set a new American record of 59:17, emphatically breaking the previous record by 26 seconds, set way back in 2007 by Ryan Hall.

What was heartening for some of us that were paying attention โ€” including Mr Hall, I’m sure โ€” was that most of the commentary and analysis of the Houston Half Marathon noted one crucial difference between Mantz’s and Hall’s respective performances: Mantz was wearing super shoes, and of course Hall, back in 2007, was not.

I think most dialled-in observers would admit that without those Nike Alphafly 3’s on Mantz’s feet, it’s unlikely there would have been a new American record.

Super Shoes Don't Make You Any Faster, It Turns Out 1
Alphafly vs Alphafly

Super shoes is the term we use for carbon-plated shoes with advanced foam technology, all designed to make you faster. They debuted around 2016 when Nike gave Kipchoge his first pair of Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4%‘s (named as such because a Nike study showed they made you 4% faster, supposedly) to secretly wear during the 2016 Rio Olympic marathon. He dominated the race. And soon after, world records started to fall.

These days, every major running brand has at least one super shoe in their range. And they’ve gone mainstream, with recreational and novice runners now shelling out upwards of $300 on a pair of speed slippers to bag them their next PR.

So for the past five years or so we’ve been in this brave new world where anyone willing to shell out the cash can take precious seconds, and even minutes off their marathon time, just by putting on a different pair of shoes.

Meanwhile, personally, I’ve been in a bit of a non-super shoe bubble: we’ve had three kids in the past five years, so I’ve not been in racing shape. But now as I start to make inroads with my mileage (and sleep) and look at potential races for later in the year, I recognize that the racing game has changed. What was a relatively niche product pre-COVID is now on everyone’s feet, it seems.

And I can’t help but think that there’s a collective implicit agreement here in the running community wherein everyone is striving for faster times, so if we all adopt this performance enhancer together, it’s OK โ€” we won’t call each other out on it.

Yes, that’s right, this week I’m going to dump on runners wearing super shoes.

Super Shoes Don't Make You Any Faster, It Turns Out 2

The 4% Faster Drug

OK, let’s do a thought experiment.

Let’s say there’s this PED (performance-enhancing drug) called “4%.” It’s banned by World Athletics and all official governing bodies and races, and it’s known to make you 4% faster. Some elite runners have been caught taking it and been stripped of their podium finishes, records, and prize money. You and I, as recreational runners, are neither interested in, or have access to something like this; it’s barely on our radar.

Now let me paint another scenario. Imagine the new “4%” substance is actually approved by the World Athletics as within their allowable guidelines; elites are using it openly to great results, and setting new world records; studies show there are no identified side effects; and some of the people in your run club start to take it.

It’s affordable, and would mean you’ll run a faster race this summer โ€” and will probably set a new PR. Would you take it?

*

I know, I know.

Super shoes aren’t a drug.

It’s more complicated than that.

They have other benefits, and can be used during training to do heavy workouts and not be so fatigued… yadda-yadda-yadda.

But whenever I see a social media post of someone bagging a new PR and standing there in a pair of max-stacked super shoes, I almost wish they added an asterisk to the post to acknowledge the significant performance benefit they’ve gained from their shoes. Because, after all, 4% turns into a minutes off a marathon, even for an elite athlete.

Super Shoes Don't Make You Any Faster, It Turns Out 3

Innovation As A Mood Dampener

But it’s innovation, which is inevitable“, I hear you say. And you’re right.

Shoe technology has advanced a lot in the past 50 years: prior to the 1970s, runners wore racing flats โ€” essentially slippers โ€” which were there for protection and durability, providing very little cushioning and negligible performance benefits.

But since the mid-1970s, companies like Nike, New Balance, and Adidas have continuously tinkered with elements like foam composition and midsole shape, which started to produce performance bumps.

So, arguably, our shoes have been making us faster for years. And combining gradual improvements in shoe tech with runners refining their knowledge of how to train and race efficiently, we’re bound to get faster over time.

But it’s really only in the last six-seven years that the combo of carbon plates and high-energy foams have accelerated the trend.

If we can currently go four percent faster in super shoes, then as the innovation process does it’s thing it’s just going to be a matter of time before we’ve got shoes that’ll make us say six percent, or even eight percent faster.

When you extrapolate this out, huge milestones like the sub two-hour marathon stop becoming a major challenge that one of our top athletes may one day beat โ€” they become an uninteresting inevitability.

And I think this is what dampens my spirits about the whole super shoe phenomenon. It takes some of the human component out of what we’re doing out there, especially during a marathon.

A personal best time is a reflection of your training and the effort you put into on race day; a good PR is like a badge of honour โ€” a stamp that shows you left nothing out there and gave an unrelenting performance.

Every second of that PR is a hard-won victory; a fight against your will and your body, and the unrelenting clock.

Oh, except that now, for a few hundred dollars, you can just shave a few minutes off of it.

The Elites Don’t Have A Choice: We Do

If you’re a career elite runner and you get paid based on finishing times, potentially breaking records and wearing your sponsors’ kit, you must race in super shoes. Everyone you’re competing against is wearing them, so you must as well.

For the rest of us, we don’t need to wear them.

Sure, they make us faster โ€” while we’re wearing them โ€” and that’s great.

But if you lace up in super shoes and break your pre-super shoe era marathon PR by, say, one minute (or more), are you telling yourself you’ve really got a new PR? Or, are you mentally adding an asterisk next to that result, noting that it was done with carbon plates and supercritical foam doing a lot of extra heavy lifting that no shoe before 2017 could muster for 26.2 miles?

To be clear, I’m not anti-super shoe. I’ve got a pair of super shoes I run in now and again, almost out of curiosity.

But Im on the fence about racing in them. If I get back into running and set a new marathon or half marathon PR wearing super shoes, unless it’s by a huge margin, I think I’ll feel a little uneasy about claiming that new mark.

My suspicion is that we’re going to see an increasing bifurcation of non-elite/recreational runners at races in the coming years: those who race in super shoes to chase faster times, and those who don’t. This latter category won’t “shoe dope” either because they’re not desperate for a new PR, are unaccustomed to super shoes, or just happy in their non-optimized trainers. And, of course, a significant number of runners are a little bit non-plussed and oblivious to all the super shoe hype.

And trust me, if you do use super shoes to break a non-super shoe PR, we’ll all think a little more of you if you asterisk that performance with a note on what you were wearing on your feet.

Super shoes don’t make you any faster, it turns out. As soon as you take them off, you’re the same speed you always were, or “4% slower,” depending on how you evaluate it.

6 thoughts on “Super Shoes Don’t Make You Any Faster, It Turns Out”

  1. Hi Thomas,

    Thanks for the interesting article. I just bought my first pair of super shoes (adios pro 4…so excited!) for my third marathon because getting awesome gear and a better time is fun and feels good. Skiers fuss with the best wax for the day, cyclists and sailors spend all their money on gains measured in grams, and runners buy a rotation of shoes because it feels like we want to push it all to the max and not let anything hold us back. Unless you don’t care and just run, which is just as good.
    I know how my training/diet/sleep/effort went; what I am proud of and when I could have tried harder, so I can only compare myself to who I was and who I want to be, and that is what makes you the runner you are. Comparing yourself to other runners is only useful as a motivator as everyone’s genetics and lives are too varied to really be comparable. So for me, it doesn’t really matter. If you are trying to qualify for a race, get the state of the art, so you can’t blame your gear. Otherwise, it’s only ever been you versus you.

    Reply
  2. My question: as an older runner (71 years old), do super shoes provide the same performance enhancement for a slower runner that is running 9 min/mile pace or slower for the marathon? There appears to be very little research on paces above 6 minutes per mile. The slower paces would generally mean a different gait/stride. One that is more flat footed/heelstrike and therefore much less toe pushoff return from the carbon plated shoe than a faster paced runner.
    A couple of side notes: because of track surface improvements, tuned and banked, should these performances also have an asterisks? And what about improvements in the poles used for the pole vault, should those also have an astericks? Where would all of this stop?

    Reply
    • John,
      we’re still waiting for the research on supershoes helping slower runners too. I suspect there’ll be some, but less, benefit. What is perhaps of equal interest to yourself is that they have been shown to lessen the impact on joints; so you can run harder or longer without beating yourself up so much.

      Regarding your examples of other innovations that improve finish times; agreed, there are small innovations that happen all the time – and now and again, a big one that changes things. Where the discussion is interesting is – what do you do if your athletics journey straddles either side of one of these innovations? How do we think about that. Obviously anyone getting into competitive running in the future will just consider supershoes a mandatory part of the sport.

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
      Thomas

      Reply
      • I’m 67 and had always raced in my training shoes (Mizuno Wave Riders). However, wanting to qualify again for Boston (after a ten year hiatus) , I decided to try some racing shoes to help increase my chances. In researching them it sounded like too much running in carbon-plated super shoes may lead to a greater chance of injury. Not sure if that is true or not (I would be interested in hearing your opinion on that). So I decided to do a “mid” upgrade to a nylon-plated shoe, the Saucony Endorphin Speed 4, which I figured would make me a little faster, without the higher injury risk of the carbon-plated shoes. In interval training the shoes definitely made a difference. Over a couple of weeks, while doing the same workout, and switching back and forth between the Mizuno’s and the Saucony’s, my pace averaged about 15 seconds faster per mile whenever I wore the Endorphin Speed shoes. Last week I ran the Houston Marathon and got a BQ. My pace was just under 9:00 per mile, so I would say Yes, there is definitely a boost for older, “slower” runners.

      • Hey Jim, well big congrats on the BQ – that’s great to hear.

        There’s been little in terms of definitive ‘science’ about whether carbon shoes lead to increased risk of injury: there’s always the risk that when you introduce something new to a process, it has unwanted side effects. And running in super shoes does change your biomechanics – which could potentially lead to injury, depending how it impacts each individual runner. But there’s been little in the way of big risks identified. I think your approach of going for a ‘soft’ upgrade and using them occasionally as opposed to all the time, is sensible. One thing is all these supershoes tend to have a higher stack than other shoes, so can be a little less stable – always worth bearing in mind.

        Thanks,
        Thomas

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Thomas Watson

Running Coach + Founder

Thomas Watson is an ultra-runner, UESCA-certified running coach, and the founder of Marathon Handbook. His work has been featured in Runner's World, Livestrong.com, MapMyRun, and many other running publications. He likes running interesting races and playing with his three little kids. More at his bio.

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