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the vaporfly thread

64 watchers

jda 23 Feb 2:45pm, 23 Feb 2021 9494 posts	0 jda It's possible that you see a big gain but simply not credible to claim that most do. 4% of a marathon would be 5 mins off the WR (and more than 2 off the half etc). Why didn't it happen?
SPR 23 Feb 3:07pm, 23 Feb 2021 33356 posts	0 SPR There's not a 1 to 1 correlation in economy for elites from everything I've read. IIRC it was about 0.6 to 0.7.
J2R 23 Feb 3:14pm, 23 Feb 2021 3433 posts	0 J2R If the shoes gave me a 0.02% improvement over my HM PB, that would be enough for me! Difference between the joyous 1:19:59 and the deeply frustrating 1:20:00.
fuzzyduck79 23 Feb 3:21pm, 23 Feb 2021 101 posts	0 fuzzyduck79 jda, I think it's credible to claim most do - the evidence is millions of real world data points, with careful treatment of the data, see NYT link before. It shows the average race time improvement to be 4-5% and looks at loads of different types of runner, I think they've done a good job of controlling for as many variables as they can. Can't be sure why this doesn't show up in the very best of the best, but it's a good question. Is Kosgei a super responder? Or just a drug cheat? Or maybe both? Who knows? I think elites already using the best shoes (inc prototypes) before has eliminated some of the gain at that end, but I also suspect there is more to it than that. My pet theory was that heavier runners might get more protection from VF during the marathon (in terms of ankle/calf damage or fatigue) and that effect doesn't translate into as much gain in the elites.
J2R 23 Feb 3:30pm, 23 Feb 2021 3434 posts	0 J2R Also, one of the features these shoes tend to provide is a kind of rolling gait, isn't it? The elite runners will already have running gaits which are less amenable to such help, perhaps.
jda 23 Feb 3:32pm, 23 Feb 2021 9495 posts	0 jda Maybe but you specifically referred to a 15:30-16 5k runner which while perhaps not quite elite is also far from typical mass-start runner. I've literally never seen a single one of those at any parkrun I've done, and neither do I know anyone IRL who's seen such a big improvement.
fuzzyduck79 23 Feb 4:21pm, 23 Feb 2021 102 posts	0 fuzzyduck79 I once ran sub 17 at my local parkrun and finished back from the winner by a mere 2.5 mins, give or take. Not a particularly quick course either! I was trying to give an example of how superspikes (maybe) compare to VF for same distance. But I do know several in the 16-20min 5k ballpark and I stand by my claim that on average they have mostly seen 40-50 secs improvement (some more, some less) after controlling for other variables.

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