OT:Mom becomes fastest American woman to run a marathon

[AngryScientist]

Originally Posted by duff_duffy

Shoes have influenced times for sure, but should not distract from how amazing her time is, .

i agree completely. woman comes back to the sport after having 2 kids and being a mom and breaks the us record, amazing accomplishment.

[tomato coupe]

That’s a great, heart-warming story. But, from an athletic perspective, it would be more impressive if a 20 year old woman had set the record.

[oldguy00]

Not just the speed that amazes me, but also the mileage those top runners can do in training without getting injured. Many will run upwards of 100 miles/week.

[Dude]

regarding shoes...are they essentially springs? Would that not help propel a runner forward OR make it easier on their muscles?

To me, that sounds...wrong or cheating or innovation? But if they are widely available I understand the field is level.

Is this like when aero bars became available? Everyone is faster and they've all shattered old speed records?

That point aside...good for her, freaking awesome!

[2LeftCleats]

My question is whether the field is really level. No problem if you’re a Nike-sponsored athlete, but if Adidas, for example, pays you, what then? Or do Nike’s competitors have anything similar?

[prototoast]

Originally Posted by 2LeftCleats

My question is whether the field is really level. No problem if you’re a Nike-sponsored athlete, but if Adidas, for example, pays you, what then? Or do Nike’s competitors have anything similar?

In the 2016 Olympics, Nike athletes definitely had an edge. After that, there were a few years when other brands were developing their shoes when many runners were allowed to wear non-sponsor correct shoes in competition. By 2022, I believe all the big shoe brands have their own "super shoe" and the playing field is mostly level again.

[AngryScientist]

Yea, I had the nike's and they were FAST shoes, but not really a great fit for my foot. I'm in the Hoka carbon part time now and they are also very good.

[572cv]

When I first saw the post OT: Mom becomes fastest American woman to run a marathon, I thought it was HIS Mom. I was prepared to be even more impressed....

[72gmc]

Originally Posted by prototoast

In the 2016 Olympics, Nike athletes definitely had an edge. After that, there were a few years when other brands were developing their shoes when many runners were allowed to wear non-sponsor correct shoes in competition. By 2022, I believe all the big shoe brands have their own "super shoe" and the playing field is mostly level again.

Nike supported parity by reportedly allowing some galactic arseholes to run amok in their track and field leadership. When quality athletes leave and others refuse to join, that has to help your competition.

[benb]

It was a little unclear how the shoe thing came into discussion and I had to go look if she was wearing the Nike shoes with the Carbon fiber spring embedded in the sole.

You can say "everyone can have them" but there's a lot of weirdness about these shoes.

1) Initially illegal
2) Nike practically owns international track and field through sponsoring just about everything
3) So the rule got changed for Nike, and the rule got changed very narrowly to allow Nike's design but make it very hard to do anything else competitive within the rules
4) Nike Patented the design, making it even harder for any other company to be competitive

So now you have Nike Athletes breaking the records, asterisks in the record books, athletes sponsored by other companies are at a disadvantage, other shoe companies are at a disadvantage, etc..

It just kind of stinks in a sport that is usually much less about equipment than cycling is. It's kind of like if Trek got an recumbent bike approved for UCI mass start racing and yet got it approved so narrowly that no one else could compete without the similar design, but Trek also manages to patent it so that everyone has to license their patent.

This is just a shade of the whole theoretical thing of a double amputee eventually becoming the fastest person in the world on bionic legs.

And it kind of detracts from her amazing accomplishment.

[batman1425]

Originally Posted by tomato coupe

That’s a great, heart-warming story. But, from an athletic perspective, it would be more impressive if a 20 year old woman had set the record.

Why?

[AngryScientist]

Originally Posted by benb

So now you have Nike Athletes breaking the records, asterisks in the record books, athletes sponsored by other companies are at a disadvantage, other shoe companies are at a disadvantage, etc..

Is this really true though? Admittedly I'm not up to date on the tech, but all of the big players now have a super zoomy carbon plate shoe. Is the Nike design still significantly faster? I was under the assumption the competitors have caught up?

[Mark McM]

The "shoe doping" aspect is interesting idea, but I'm not convinced it is cheating.

I'm guessing that to get these shoes approved, Nike had to demonstrate that these shoes were available for purchase by anyone (much like UCI requires all equipment to be available for sale). In which case, if an athlete signs a contract with a different shoe sponsor, they have made their own choice to not wear the Nike shoes. If I chose to be sponsored by Crocs and agree to wear their plastic clogs when racing, are the other runners cheating by using running shoes? Nike's shoes may put other shoe makers at a disadvantage, but athletes aren't "forced" to be sponsored by other shoe makers. What's to keep athletes sponsored by other shoe makers from running Nike shoes with the NIke logos covered up (or printed over to look like their sponsor's shoes)? That kind of thing is done in cycling all the time.

Besides which, technical innovation is inevitable. Modern composite running tracks are faster than old cinder tracks, so does that mean that Usain Bolt's records shouldn't count because he runs on different surfaces than Jesse Owens did? The Klapp skate was big leap in speed skating, does that mean that those whose switched to Klapp skates were cheaters?

It's a purely romantic notion to use records as a way to judge who was the best of all time, but it just doesn't work that way. At best they can only show who was best at a point of time or in a particular era. The advancement of records over time are probably better seen as the progression of sports performance, through better equipment, training, tactics, etc.

The story of the double amputee and "bionic" legs seems to evoke the story of Oscar Pistorius's struggle to get accepted into the Olympics team. There was great technical debate about whether his spring-like running prostheses gave him an advantage. But he provided a counter-argument that was hard to dismiss: He pointed out that there are and had been other double amputee athletes who had used similar prostheses, and if the prostheses were really such as an advantage, then athletes using them would have already been winning races and breaking. But they hadn't, and Oscar was the only double amputee to have even gotten close to qualifying to attend the Olympics, let alone ever breaking any records. Comparing the average performance of amputee athletes on prostheses to able bodied athletes showed that the amputees were at an overall disadvantage.

[fried bake]

This is fascinating on so many levels. First, the notion that tech has evolved to aid runners in such a significant way. I always thought that what separates running from cycling was the purity: a pair of shoes and the right genetics and the person in Zambia could compete with someone in Colombia. Now I’m hearing that it’s part of an arms race between billion dollar corporations and their sponsored athletes. #nowords


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[hellvetica]

Originally Posted by tomato coupe

That’s a great, heart-warming story. But, from an athletic perspective, it would be more impressive if a 20 year old woman had set the record.

please, do elaborate. very interested to try to even understand this.