What problems are magic ‘super shoes’ causing in marathons?

If you offer an athlete in any track event something that can instantly make them four percent faster, they might think you’re offering them a performance-enhancing drug.

But they will be surprised if you insist that what you are offering is perfectly legal and even accepted and regulated by all the relevant sports authorities.

What’s more, the amazing thing you have to offer doesn’t cost more than a few thousand rupees or a few hundred pounds.

The athlete will be ready to pay in seconds because a four percent improvement in running time is a huge advantage, which can take months or years to achieve.

Anyone who watched the Berlin Marathon last year saw this in action.

It can be seen on the feet of Ethiopian runner Tygist Asefa, who won the race in two hours, 11 minutes and 53 seconds. Thus, with an improvement of two minutes and 11 seconds, she blew away the women’s world record.

Tigist Aseefa was wearing none other than a pair of Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1s, manufactured by Adidas and priced at 400 pounds (roughly Rs. 140,000).

While the price may seem a lot higher than your average parkrun shoe, it’s a good deal for any professional athlete, even if they’re not a world-class athlete.

In sports science, such shoes are known as Tars or TARS (Technically Advanced Shoes). It is also popularly known as Super Show.

These trainers have large spongy soles, often with carbon fiber plates that, to put it simply, help you run faster.

While there is no doubt that Asifa is an exceptionally talented athlete, the 1.6 percent margin that enabled her to break the world record raises some serious questions about whether such shoes should be allowed. No.

During the last few years Nike Since the arrival of K’s groundbreaking Vapor Fly and then Alpha Fly shoes, records have been broken at an astounding rate and by an equally astounding margin.

For example, as of December 2020, the record men’s half marathon time was believed to be 58 minutes. He was finished by Kebby Watt Candy in 57 minutes 32 seconds.

Any marathon enthusiast will surely know that Eliud Kipchoge ran the world’s first two-hour marathon wearing Super Shoes in October 2019.

This section contains related reference points (Related Nodes field).

Although this record is not officially recognized because his Nike Alphas were a bit too super for the authorities.

This showed how devastatingly effective these boots really are. As an avid and very unprofessional runner I know this from my own experience.

It was only when I started wearing Vaporflies, which cost more than 200 pounds (about 70 thousand Pakistani Rupees), that my 5k and 10k records were shattered overnight.

My 5k went from 19min 21sec to 18min 29 and back down to 18min, while my 10k went from 40min 32sec to 38min 42sec to under 38min.

These were initial margins of over four percent, which is almost exactly the figure Nike claims its shoes can improve one’s ‘physical condition’.

Interestingly, Adidas makes similarly wild claims for its Supershoes, saying they improve ‘wearer economy’, and provide ‘runners with more energy’.

Such language is basically the undeniable fact that these shoes are basically springs that make the runner run faster.

Wearing them makes you feel like you’re walking on the moon and it’s no wonder that adopting these shoes is sometimes called ‘mechanical’ or ‘technical doping’.

In some circles, the term is more informal and explicit as they are often jokingly and knowingly referred to as ‘cheater shoes’.

In essence, it’s the athlete’s guilty pleasure. Everyone knows that they increase your time a lot but since they are legal everyone is wearing them. So you have to wear them too.

Is it possible to turn back time and ban super shoes? Of course, it is too late because these shoes have been allowed in competitions for a long time and the ban will also raise the unanswerable question of which shoes technology It is permissible.

What about nutritional science along with shoes? Or physiotherapy? What is the point at which athletic performance begins to rely more on technology than on guts and effort?

Although we may never know, what can be known for sure is when technology takes on real significance.

Asifa’s record is an amazing thing, but if her shoes weren’t so super, could she have broken the world record? Deep down we all know the answer.