Engner66 wrote:
2018, no super shoes in my view (4% are not in the league of the Next % of Alphafly's in my view). Kipchoge ran 2:01:39. He did not collapse as you falsely claim that people were doing before super shoes.
Better argument:
2014, no super shoes (well, Adidas boost flats, which were "fast" and in my view faster than say Hyperspeeds) Kimetto ran 2:02:57. Same, he seems collected and did not collapse as you falsely claim.
Not arguing that these shoes aren't faster than old hsoes, but if we choose 2014 as a reference as you might prefer, the speed has improved about 1.3%. How much is the shoes vs Kipchoge being fitter than Kimetto, well not sure we will ever find out.
Kipchoge and a few other Nike athletes started using the 4% in 2016, or at least a prototype version of it. Galen Rupp, Flanagan and Amy Craigg used them at he 2016 Olympic trials in LA and Eliud used them at London. They really stirred controversy when they had them at he 2016 Rio games. That was the first time we saw the thick midsole Nikes, which eventually ended up being the Vaporfly 4%.
In 2018, Eliud used the Nike Vaporfly Elite, which at the time was only available to handful of elite athletes. Nike sold a handful of them for like $1500. Those eventually became the Vaporfly Next%.. or closely resembled them. Supposedly the Vaporfly Elites were one-off built for each athlete with "tuned" carbon plates based on body weight and other factors, but that's not confirmed. Regardless, the first WR in 2018 was definitely with the ZoomX, carbon plate Nike shoes.
I think the fastest marathon Kichoge ran pre-SuperShoe was the 2015 Berlin marathon in 2:04.00. One advantage he has over others is the Breaking2 event, where he ran behind pacers with new shoes, a pace car, closed course and did 2:00.25. The mental advantage you'd have going into Berlin, knowing you have run 2:00.25 before (in Breaking2) has to be massive. Breaking barriers is such a common topic in endurance sports and mental training... so there's probably as much to that as there is to any pair of shoes. The dude pushed himself to a 1:59 marathon. Surely he pulls up to the start line knowing what he is capable of. That's huge.