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Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

nytimes.com

181–190 of 304 posts

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#181
post #60

Running shoes are funny things. Due to the fact that they are basically a weight at the end of a long fulcrum, the heavier they are the slower you will go. Plus they are full of padding which messes up the natural springs you already have built into your feet. It is not surprising someone invented a shoe that is somewhat lighter which makes it faster. I find the spring idea somewhat dubious but maybe they do give you…

Actually Noakes (I think it was) found that reducing weight was only effective to a point. Being barefoot is definitely not faster than having shoes on. See my other comment above re: Bikila.

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#183
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We seem to take it very much case by case. Running efficiency augments are controversial. Drugs are verboten. But better bicycles are OK, and football players can wear eyeblack and grip-enhancing gloves. The closer a sport is to pure human performance, though, the more sensitive we seem to be about it. Perhaps out of a sense of continuity through the ages. Yeah, we train better than Athenian athletes. But we still ru…

As another example of equipment that is banned because its technological advancements are deemed to give an unfair advantage, take a look at golf. Equipment manufacturers need to get their products tested & approved by the USGA in order to be allowed in many tournaments. Clubs or balls that fly too far when you hit them do not get the required approval.

And the USGA actually took away the stomach/gut putter.

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#184
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We seem to take it very much case by case. Running efficiency augments are controversial. Drugs are verboten. But better bicycles are OK, and football players can wear eyeblack and grip-enhancing gloves. The closer a sport is to pure human performance, though, the more sensitive we seem to be about it. Perhaps out of a sense of continuity through the ages. Yeah, we train better than Athenian athletes. But we still ru…

As another example of equipment that is banned because its technological advancements are deemed to give an unfair advantage, take a look at golf. Equipment manufacturers need to get their products tested & approved by the USGA in order to be allowed in many tournaments. Clubs or balls that fly too far when you hit them do not get the required approval.

In golf this makes sense as it is far easier to replace your clubs than make a new course.

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#185
post #166
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We seem to take it very much case by case. Running efficiency augments are controversial. Drugs are verboten. But better bicycles are OK, and football players can wear eyeblack and grip-enhancing gloves. The closer a sport is to pure human performance, though, the more sensitive we seem to be about it. Perhaps out of a sense of continuity through the ages. Yeah, we train better than Athenian athletes. But we still ru…

> But better bicycles are OK UCI has lots of rules around the size, geometry, and weight of equipment that can limit how much better you can make a bike. They even explicitly don't allow new innovations without their prior approval. Manufacturers find ways around the rules but to a large degree better bikes are actually not OK.

This is strange to me and basically says the engineers are not allowed to compete...

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#186
post #124

Articles like this make me want to get a NYTimes sub, excellent reporting on something mundane with enough statistics to make it worth the read. If we ban shoes now, will we ban other augments in the future? Will this stunt the progression of such human performance augmentations?

We seem to take it very much case by case. Running efficiency augments are controversial. Drugs are verboten. But better bicycles are OK, and football players can wear eyeblack and grip-enhancing gloves. The closer a sport is to pure human performance, though, the more sensitive we seem to be about it. Perhaps out of a sense of continuity through the ages. Yeah, we train better than Athenian athletes. But we still ru…

> We seem to take it very much case by case.

The principle is very consistent: You can't do something that gives you an unfair advantage over other competitors. Everything banned basically falls into one of three categories:

- It would be prohibitively expensive for others to adopt the technology. This is why you have weight minimums for bikes, boats, etc.

- Others would have to risk their health to compete. This is why you have bans of performance enhancing drugs, blood doping, etc.

- Others would have to break the law to compete. This is why you have bans on illegal drugs, even if they're not necessarily performance enhancing.

Occasionally things are also banned to preserve comparability to current records or to preserve the aesthetic sense of the sport, but for the most part when something is banned it's for one of the three enumerated reasons.

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#187
post #113

Articles like this make me want to get a NYTimes sub, excellent reporting on something mundane with enough statistics to make it worth the read. If we ban shoes now, will we ban other augments in the future? Will this stunt the progression of such human performance augmentations?

I'd love to get a NYT sub but they operate like SiriusXM when it comes to cancellations. You have to talk to a human, during business hours, and you have to fight with them for 15 minutes to get cancelled (meanwhile they offer you continually cheaper rates to stay on, so if you pay rack rates you're clearly overpaying in the first place). If they offered a way to self-manage a subscription that I could cancel at any…

If you are in California, then there is a new law effective July 1, 2018 that says they must let you cancel online:

https://www.cnet.com/news/companies-must-let-customers-cance...

In this article, it specifically mentions how difficult it is to cancel a NYT subscription.

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#188
post #166
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We seem to take it very much case by case. Running efficiency augments are controversial. Drugs are verboten. But better bicycles are OK, and football players can wear eyeblack and grip-enhancing gloves. The closer a sport is to pure human performance, though, the more sensitive we seem to be about it. Perhaps out of a sense of continuity through the ages. Yeah, we train better than Athenian athletes. But we still ru…

> But better bicycles are OK UCI has lots of rules around the size, geometry, and weight of equipment that can limit how much better you can make a bike. They even explicitly don't allow new innovations without their prior approval. Manufacturers find ways around the rules but to a large degree better bikes are actually not OK.

@mathgladiator sometimes such rules are aimed at limiting the advantage you can buy with money. Not sure if this is the true motivation here. Or in Formula 1, the restrictions are generally for the safety of the drivers. Anyway, engineering within constraints can still be competitive.

(I don't feel strongly about this personally, just listing some of the counterpoints)

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#189
post #124

Articles like this make me want to get a NYTimes sub, excellent reporting on something mundane with enough statistics to make it worth the read. If we ban shoes now, will we ban other augments in the future? Will this stunt the progression of such human performance augmentations?

We seem to take it very much case by case. Running efficiency augments are controversial. Drugs are verboten. But better bicycles are OK, and football players can wear eyeblack and grip-enhancing gloves. The closer a sport is to pure human performance, though, the more sensitive we seem to be about it. Perhaps out of a sense of continuity through the ages. Yeah, we train better than Athenian athletes. But we still ru…

When aero gear was introduced to cycling there was quite a bit of turmoil. Not the least of which was the fact that Greg Lemond used it to demolish Laurent Fignon in the last time trail, and jump what seemed to be a comfortable gap and win the Tour. By six seconds. I can still picture Fignon laying on the ground at the finish line, hands clenched in fists wondering where it all went wrong.

There were limits then and there have been limits since. No fairings. How long your helmet can be. I have a vague recollection about them banning inserts in your clothes (no teardrops for your calves, no articulated helmets or dorsal fins).

[edit: and apparently disc brakes were just approved last season]

These days Lemond is watchdogging for electric motors hidden in the bikes. Which is a side effect of trying to fix two other problems. First, PEDs aka doping. Second, paying to win.

The exotic materials some teams could afford resulted in light bikes that other teams couldn’t approach. They set a minimum weight for bikes, which meant you either put heavier equipment on the bike (eg, torque gauges in the rear hub) or you loaded weights into it. Or you hid a flashlight battery and a tiny 20 watt motor in the bottom bracket...

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#190

The aggressive opinion on regulating these shoes seems over the top to me, the next best shoes, the relatively unheralded Nike Streak, provided a 3% performance improvement, and more runners achieved a personal best with those shoes. And improvements with the vapor fly 4% were smaller for faster runners. Also many runners choose shoes based on injury prevention and comfort - if a shoe gets you to the starting line un…

Being 3 or 4% more efficient on race day is a HUGE advantage. Maybe not every elite runner wants to have to wear these shoes to compete?

In cycling people are risking lifetime bans to get a 5 or 8% power advantage. Which is doubly amazing because speed goes up with the square root of power due to drag. I’d wager that 3% for a runner is a bigger deal than 6% for a cyclist.
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