One month before the year’s biggest track and field event, a
dizzying number of fleet-footed performances have lit up local and professional
meets.
اضافة اعلان
In the spring, the University of Washington track team
produced eight sub-four-minute milers. In June alone, four high school runners
broke that barrier in the same race. On the professional circuit, three world
records were shattered within a week in Paris in June: Faith Kipyegon of Kenya
set a record in both the women’s 1,500 meters and 5,000 meters, and Lamecha
Girma of Ethiopia set a new mark in the men’s 3,000-meter steeplechase.
On Friday night, Kipyegon set yet another record, smashing
the women’s 1-mile world record by almost five seconds when she broke the tape
in 4 minutes, 7.64 seconds. The performance stunned track fans accustomed to
records that often improve by mere tenths of a second.
The question — why so many fast times? — has been asked and
answered endlessly. Wavelight, the pace-setting technology, surely helps. So do
the ever-evolving breeds of super shoes — those thick, springy kicks with a
midsole plate that have revolutionized racing in recent years by giving higher
rebound energy when a runner pushes off.
But many sports scientists see something else: The payoff
from several years of training in those specialized shoes. And it’s one that
recreational runners can benefit from, too.
“Because the shoes are a new tool, the more we run in them,
the better we adapt,” said Geoff Burns, a physiologist and biomechanics expert
with the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
Burns and other sports scientists have an abiding faith in
what is known as the specificity principle: for runners to compete at their
best, they have to train in the same way they will race. That means running at
their race pace, drinking the same fluids, consuming the same gels, and,
perhaps most important, wearing the same shoes.
Super shoes burst onto the scene in 2016 when Nike shocked
the world with its first thick-soled, energy-returning shoes, the Nike Zoom
Vaporfly 4%. They were so obviously faster than earlier shoes that World
Athletics, the governing body of track and field, began limiting the height of
a shoe’s midsole in 2020. Now all major shoe companies have super shoes in
their lineup, and hundreds of thousands of everyday runners are wearing them.
For elite athletes, it’s become hard to resist the pull of
both training and racing in super shoes. Lindsay Flanagan, who has a personal
best marathon time of 2:24:43 seconds, will be one of three US women running
the World Championships marathon in Budapest, Hungary, in August.
“Since I’m going to be wearing super shoes in races, I want
to get a good feel for them in training,” Flanagan said. “I’ve found that I can
log more quality days, as well as more mileage in general, because my legs come
around sooner.”
But Flanagan also knows some professional runners who don’t
train in super shoes. They believe they can build up their strength while
wearing traditional shoes, and then gain an extra boost on race day by slipping
on the souped-up shoes.
Of course, the “Nietzsche principle” can sometimes apply:
that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. A recent pilot study from
California State University, East Bay, found some evidence for this by
comparing runner fitness gains in traditional racing flats compared to super
shoes. Those who wore the flats complained of more muscle pain, but they also
improved their running economy more than runners who wore super shoes.
Two experts in the study of running injuries, Adam Tenforde
and Amol Saxena, believe that super-shoe use can lead to serious ailments. In
February, they co-authored an article in the journal Sports Medicine that
presented five case studies of navicular bone injuries that stemmed from
super-shoe use.
“I’ve seen super-shoe injuries in runners at all levels —
high school runners, recreational runners and elite athletes,” Saxena said.
“The shoes can put atypical stresses on the bones and soft-tissue structures.”
On the other hand, there are no known reviews of super-shoe
injury rates that follow standard statistical models. And two leading
super-shoe researchers, Wouter Hoogkamer and Max Paquette, say they have seen
no convincing data that runner biomechanics are dramatically different in super
shoes than in traditional ones.
Both Burns, the physiologist, and Dustin Joubert, an
exercise physiologist at Stephen F. Austin State University, have also found
that contrary to the assumptions of many, super shoes have a longer functional
life than traditional ones. The dense foam midsoles in super shoes, they found,
retain their cushioning and energy-return properties longer than the softer EVA
midsoles in earlier shoes.
The soft cushioning of super shoes could prove a boon to
older runners, too. Bill Salazar, a 77-year-old runner from Arizona, has been
training in them for more than three years, logging about 56km a week.
“The big benefit for me is that I recover faster in super
shoes,” said Salazar, who ran a 4:22 marathon in Berlin last September.
The same cushioning and recovery benefits have been reported
by many top runners. They note that they used to “hit the wall” after 20 miles
in the marathon, but now, while wearing super shoes, they can finish stronger
and faster because their leg muscles are not so fatigued.
In the London Marathon in April, Kenyan newcomer Kelvin
Kiptum wore super shoes while recording the second-fastest marathon time ever,
2:01:25. Kiptum ran the first 21km in 1:01:40, and the second leg in 59:45.
Apparently, his legs weren’t very tired.
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