Yeah, that was my immediate thought. The pace here is relatively low, and not exactly “optimal” for what these shoes are designed to achieve. But I can see why Matt did it that way given he was working to HR as he says.
As I have a stryd, if I could do the same on a treadmill, then rather than HR which is reasonable, but somewhat variable, I could see what the impact on reported power/form power/leg spring stiffness, etc is at a faster pace. That clearly has some caveats within it, depending on people’s viewpoints on running power, but it would potentially be slightly more objective than HR would be when running nearer threshold (it would make sense to me that ave HR across repeated intervals would trend upwards over time, and favour the shoes tested first).
I don’t have alpha’s however, but do have the other three Matt tested.
Its also an interesting question, what pace do these shoes give a benefit. I was running at 5m/km which is a 3h30m marathon pace, which is probably top quartile pace (if not higher)
All paces, every single pace.
Most of us have succumbed to having a £200 pair of shoes for “training” in.
Why?
Because we perceive there to be a benefit from wearing them to train in (reduced fatigue being the top one for me, but also, the kudos on Strava, as they’re a piece of pie to run 4:30/km in)
For races (which is what I think you mean?)
loads of stuff on google, but this one from the 4% shoe is my favourite:
Nice article, however I do not agree with this comment
"Compared with typical training shoes, the Vaporflys are believed to wear out quickly: Some runners have said they lose their effectiveness after 100 miles or so."
Mine have done well over 1000km, and still quantifiably quicker than a very low mileage Pagasus 36. So they may lose a bit, however, they do wear pretty well
Also the runner who goes from 3h13 in 2017 to 2h56 in 2018 is clearly in much better shape (just looking at the pictures), of course some of the performance increase is due to the shoe, but the majority is his fitness
Yeah, they do point out the flaws with their methodology.
But, how else are you going to get such a large sample size, where people don’t know they’re being “tested”?
There’s this one from the WSJ on the Next% (it’s not behind a paywall if you Google it )
Following on from my own suiggestion, here’s the same half marathon I ran in back to back years (all times within c100s of one another). I was certainly fitter in 2018, yet ran faster in 2019 when wearing 4% shoes for the very first time. I had been off running for weeks at the start of 2020 due to rehabbing a plantar fascia issue, and this was my first real effort run of the year and I very much surprised myself with the time.
2019 is complicated by the fact it was blowing a gale (Beast from the East), and I don’t have (and it didn’t exist at that time) stryd wind to account for that in raw power numbers. That’s why I think a treadmill test would be of interest, to eliminate that variable.
Whilst conditions make comparing 2018 and 2019 hard in terms of raw power, it’s noticeable how other metrics are really rather different. Vertical oscillation is nearly 1cm higher. Ground contact time is also 5% reduced, despite cadence being lower. To me, that really does translate to the shoes rebounding off the floor and propelling you forward. Leg spring stiffness is also noticeably higher. It’s also noticeable how much steadier all of those metrics are in the vaporflys. The numbers in the asics all trend down, indicating fatigue and deterioration in my form. Yet the vaporflys seem to negate that break down.
All of these features are present to some extent in 2020, just to a slightly lesser degree as I really started to fade well before half way, as I went off way too hard for where my fitness was at.
It’s hard to say whether these changes in running form are good for you, or make you faster, but for me, it’s fairly undeniable there is a change. Which is easy to “feel”, just by running in them. And given they also “feel” faster as I think we’d all agree, I have to conclude the changes they create are advantageous to speed.
Last night my 5k beer run (race) was back, I had done a very hard training run on Sunday and my legs still felt trashed so I had decided to wear my old 4%'s there (read 1000k of use). However a friend of mine insisted I wear his reasonably worn NEXT’s, so I did.
I ran 16:45, which is the same as my pb there back in November in the 4%'s (circa 600k of use back then I reckon). They did not feel quick, but clearly I was running quick. I did not nail the end either so I possibly could have gone slightly faster.
I have a brand new pair of 4%'s which I will wear next week, hopefully in similar conditions and then a pair of Alpha’s which I will wear in a few weeks (I have a massive block of racing coming up), will report back when I have the results!
Isn’t it the same argument/theory as doping though, particularly in say sprints? It’s not that it makes you faster or stronger, but you can recover faster to go hard(er) again the next day?
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