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.

Comments

Publish the study

[Anonymous Coward]

Data for a double blind study please, or it did not happen. Even then... http://jir.com/

Re:Publish the study

[datavirtue]

Why is Nike always the darling of the press when they have and continue to trample on human rights? They even went so far as to persecute a journalist who dared expose the human rights violations. Her story was buried and she was banished from CBS or whatever network it was--career ended for one story which never aired.

It is possible...

[mi]

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.

Illegal performance enhancement ??

[Archfeld]

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...

Re:Illegal performance enhancement ??

[bongey]

NY Times article "Yannis Nikolaou, a spokesman for the I.A.A.F., said that while it’s accurate to say that the Vaporflys are legal, it’s actually more accurate to say there is no evidence they shouldn’t be."

I can see that it might not actually be illegal in that the sole just supports a person foot such that the foots natural spring motion in the arch works better.

Re:Illegal performance enhancement ??

[DRJlaw]

The International Association of Athletics Federations, track's governing body, has rules about shoes, but they are vague: "Shoes must not be constructed so as to give athletes any unfair assistance or advantage." It does not specify what such an advantage might be.

4% faster?

Sure... because there's no difference between barefoot and a 1920s running shoe, and then a 1960s running shoe, and then a mid 70s running shoe, and then a turn-of-the-century running shoe.

TFA doesn't say that this is the only shoe that shows a performance difference, period. It says that this is the only shoe that shows a significant performance difference versus the prior generation of racing shoes.

TFA also explains that the "unfair" adjective is significant -- "The rules also state that shoes "must be reasonably available to all in the spirit of the universality of athletics." Being available to all of the competitors sounds as if it goes a long way towards conformance to the rule.

Re:Illegal performance enhancement ??

[Whibla]

TFA doesn't say that this is the only shoe that shows a performance difference, period. It says that this is the only shoe that shows a significant performance difference versus the prior generation of racing shoes.

On reading the summary I found myself wondering if they tested Enko's running shoes. Then I realised, they didn't actually test any shoes at all, just performed some analysis on runners and their times.

The various quotes however, from you and parents, do go some way towards answering the question I've had since I first saw those shoes (rather ironically from an ad. on /.): Would they even be 'legal' to run in, in any 'proper' race. But then, given the following quote from the article, I find myself wondering what the difference is apart from one pair of shoes has a visible spring, while the other is less 'honest' about how it works:

"Nested in the central part of the shoe is a piece of carbon fiber that stores and releases energy every time it hits the floor. Imagine an ACME spring-powered shoe from a Looney Tunes cartoon. Except this shoe, unlike the ones used by Wile E. Coyote, actually work–and work well.

I guess the one thing it does show though is that athletic records aren't (necessarily) being beaten today by superior athletes just by athletes with superior equipment. That has to cheapen any sense of achievement, surely?

Would like to know more about the technology.

[wolf12886]

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.

Sure they can

[nehumanuscrede]

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 ! :|

Re:Correlation vs causation

[thegarbz]

People who are willing to pay 250$ for running shoes can run faster. Go figure.

You're an idiot if you think that wasn't accounted for. Also $250 isn't something outrageous for a running shoe. There's a lot of different shoes in that price class. Hell I can barely break 6min kilometers and my shoes cost $195, why? Foot problems makes me very picky on getting shoes that don't cause my knees to hurt when I run.

Still the cheapest activity I do.

Difference?

[ChrisMaple]

one of the only popular shoes we can really say makes any difference at all.

I bet they didn't try high heels or steel-toed work boots. Those would make more than a 4% difference.