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Can Nike's $250 Running Shoes Make You Run Faster? NYT Analysis Says Yes (fastcompany.com)
Last year, Nike released a new pair of running shoes that claim to make you run 4% faster, thanks to its proprietary sole technology. The new "Vaporfly 4%" shoes would, in theory, "be enough to help a runner break the mythical two-hour marathon barrier for the first time," Fast Company points out. The New York Times decided to put the shoes to the test through an intensive analysis of 500,000 marathon and half marathon running times, culled from the social network Strava. Nike's claims apparently check out. Fast Company reports the findings: We know a lot about the runners in our data set, including their age, gender, race history and, in some cases, how much training they've done in the months before a race. We also know about the races themselves, including the distribution of runners' times and the weather that day. We can put all of this information into a model to try to estimate the change in runners' time from their previous races. After controlling for all of these variables, our model estimates that the shoes account for an expected improvement of about 4 percent over a runner's previous time. Including the uncertainty around the estimates, the Vaporflys are a clear outlier, one of the only popular shoes we can really say makes any difference at all.
Data for a double blind study please, or it did not happen. Even then... http://jir.com/
Betteridge says no. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Betteridge says no. ;)
Dont tell them about the shoes/motivate. Change the material and say they are the same shoes with a large sample size then come back.
Screw their faulty analysis. Too sloppy to even waste time denigrating. So what if they came up with a model that could support their claims. Nike already did that. How about forking out for an actual test where the variances in the variables don't swamp the effect?
If you're a virgin, fat, slimy, /.-reading, LoL-playing slob, then no, these shoes won't turn you into Usain Bolt overnight.
But if you're fit, eat right, train correctly, and have enough sleep/rest, then yes, these shoes will improve your performance. It's not all marketing.
After all NYT analysis showed she had a 97 per cent chance of winning the election. That extra 4 per cent would have put her over the top and cemented the reputation of the NYT's analysis team.
Macropods, for example, can hop fast — for long times — because their legs have, essentially, springs inside. This allows them to reuse something like 70% of the energy from hop to hop. That figure human legs is merely in single digits... There is definitely room for improvement.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
My metal baseball cleats make me run faster. With greater agility on irregular paths, too.
Don't get in my way.
Wouldn't this qualify the shoes as an illegal performance enhancement ? Just like the artificial lower limbs with a higher than natural spring resistance enhance a runners ability ?
https://www.scientificamerican...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Earlier studies showed that the more expensive your running shoes, the more injuries you'll sustain.
Better get the cheap stuff, saves on medical costs too.
Very interesting. I'm sure its very difficult to improve something as basic and unbiauitous as the shoe. I wish there was more discussion about the technology.
From the article it sounds like the improvement might be due to a carbon fiber plate they added to the length, which acts like a spring for your toes. Very cool.
The .0001% of elite runners where footwear technology might be a variable in their performance don't typically buy their own shoes.
They are gifted to them or are required to wear them as part of their endorsement deal with Nike. ( Or Reebok, or $Shoe_Brand )
The other part of that endorsement deal is them getting in front of a camera and convincing YOU that buying this shoe will make you
into the most awesome athlete the world has ever seen.
Just look what it did for them ! :|
Vaporfly shoes?
Lame-O name.
Big deal, in the mid 60's we had PF Flyers with the Action Wedge, we could "run faster and jump higher" with 'em.
There's only one race: the human race.
Namaste.
I'm sure that all the Slashdot reading competitive marathon runners are all thinking ... Wow, why is slashdot running this article that all my runner friends were talking about yesterday?
The fastest I ever ran was when I happened to be wearing concrete shoes.
Fuck this advertisement.
ditch the extra weights at the end of a long lever arm, learn a natural gait, and run faster w/less effort.
After this article, someone in New York City is driving a BRAND NEW TESLA! It really does pay to be a shill.
People who are willing to pay 250$ for running shoes can run faster. Go figure.
Itâ(TM)s gotta be the shoes, money!
I bet they didn't try high heels or steel-toed work boots. Those would make more than a 4% difference.
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I tried to RTFA but have to admit it was long and I only skimmed it. Nike never claimed 4% reduction in time, only in energy use. What that means is at the end of the 26.2 miles you will have used the energy you would have previously used to run 25.15 miles. Go to any running site race predictor, and you will find about 20 second per mile slower time for every doubling in distance (average runners). Assuming you could run the 26.2 with the new shoes in the same time per mile as you could have run 25.15 before, this only gets you a gain of 30 seconds, or about 0.3% improvement in time.
I suspect what is really happening is spending $250 for shoes increases your motivation and your mind has bought into that false notion that you should run 4% faster. Just look at the few people who switched to not using Vaporfly and they got 7% slower. They just weren't trying as hard. Since I'm posting Anonymously, I feel free to propose that anyone who wants the physiological benefits can improve their time by 16% by sending me $1000 (4x the cost).
4% may not sound like much, but it is a huge, I would say quite incredible difference. I am not much of a runner (well jogger), but I have done some competitions and a speed difference of 1% is clearly detectable in the strain you feel.
The current world record for the marathon is 123 minutes. A 4% reduction would take that to 118 minutes, or 1 hour 58 minutes.
Even if there is a statistically significant boost in "big data" number of event participants, that does not mean the elite runners do necessarily benefit at all. The biomechanics of running for the pros are somewhat different: go look at videos of the event winners and see how their feet land on the ground in comparison with us plebs. Their step is closer to a sprint step than the heel-first strike of most joggers.
There are a lot of factors when it comes to performance, as indicated. Weather, the amount of training done before, recovery times, etc. A big factor that many do not think about is form, heel to toe ratios for design, etc. Weight, not just the person, but also their running clothes can come into play in some cases. So, what did Nike figure out, or is it random good luck with people who actually train better?
From personal experience, products such as Stryd, heart rate monitors with better GPS capabilities, and such also make a huge difference. Stryd actually has the most potential to change running in a long time, in the way heart rate monitors changed running and training for those who know how to use them properly.
So, we shall see in time if these new Nike shoes really did the trick, or if something else is at play here.
I like this study.
It shows that the much more affordable Nike Zoom Streak is second best. It is actually one of the most affordable shoes on the market, you can get a pair for like 60-70 bucks.
That's going to save me a lot of money for the "almost the best" shoes.
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