How Much Faster Will You Run in Nike Vaporflys? Mike Haischer Has the Data

Will running a marathon in high-tech super shoes help you run
faster?


Nike made huge headlines when they came out with the Vaporfly
series in 2017.  Featuring a new kind of foam and a flexible
carbon plate, Nike promised that their expensive new shoes would
improve a marathoner’s running economy by 4%.


With elites and recreational runners doing everything they could
to improve by just one percent, these magic new shoes were pretty
tantalizing.


But with all new technology comes controversy.  Nike had
already been supplying its best runners with Vaporflies as early
as 2016, which was an Olympic year.  Other athletes
sponsored by other companies would be at a clear disadvantage if
the 4% improvement numbers were really true and they complained
to the governing bodies of the sport.


Rules changed and the copycats followed Nikes lead.  Now in
2021, most of the major running shoe companies have some version
of high-tech foam and carbon plate shoes and all of them need to
be available to the public before they can be used in
competition.


So what does this all mean for you?  How much do high-tech
shoes matter in your running and racing?  I wanted to find
out so I invited Michael Haischer on the Run to the Top to tell
us what he found.


Mike is a doctoral student and lab manager at the Athletic and
Human Performance Research Center at Marquette University in
Milwaukee, WI, which just so happens to be my alma mater.


Mike and his team wanted to better understand the potential
performance-enhancing effects of technological advancements in
marathon racing shoes.  So they examined the finishing times
of the top 50 male and 50 female runners from all the World
Marathon Major series in the past decade, both before and after
the introduction of new Nike shoe models.


Did the Nikes make a difference?  And if so, what
implications does that have on the rest of us, who are not in the
top 50?


We are about to find out.
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