Whether a beginner is trying to optimize their 5K performance or a seasoned marathoner is trying to shave minutes off their final time, a team at the University of Colorado Boulder has found that all it might take to achieve those goals is the right pair of running shoes.
Doctoral student Bradley Needles studies performance-running footwear in a CU Boulder lab with professor Alena Grabowski. The two study advanced footwear technology, also known as “super shoes.” A super shoe is a highly advanced, race-day running shoe engineered with a thick foam midsole and an embedded stiff carbon-fiber plate combined with a rocking design.
Needles and Grabowski have found that when runners of all types put on these shoes, they use less energy to run, resulting in faster times. Their on May 26 measured the running economy of runners wearing advanced spikes, or track shoes. Runners came to their lab, and the researchers recorded their running economy, a measure of the energy cost of running thatap the running equivalent of the miles per gallon of a car.
“We found that (the runners) are about 2.1% more efficient while wearing this newer style of shoes compared to what they would have worn prior to 2020,” Needles said.
The original super shoe, the Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4%, got its name from a study at CU Boulder. It found that, on average, people who wore the shoe used 4% less energy while running. That could put a sub-two-hour marathon within reach, the authors predicted in 2017.
The authors were proved right on April 26, when 29-year-old Sabastian Sawe of Kenya in 1 hour, 59 minutes, 30 seconds, becoming the first person to ever run an official 26.2-mile race in under two hours. Just 11 seconds behind Sawe was Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha, who also finished the race in under 2 hours, becoming the second person to run an official sub-two-hour marathon. Both athletes wore the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, which are made by Adidas and retail for $500.
“Itap a fun time to be around and see records being broken, not only from the capability of the athlete, but also from the footwear that they’re using,” Grabowski said.
The exciting thing is, Needles said, their research suggests that anyone can benefit from wearing these high-performance shoes. Most shoe brands have developed versions of the super shoes that are available at retail stores, typically costing $200 to $300 at full price. When choosing a shoe, Needles said, the body is a good judge of what will work well.
“The good thing is most shoe companies have caught up and these super shoes or advanced footwear technology shoes, they are all really, really good, which is exciting,” Needles said. “I’d say if something feels good to you when you try it on, itap probably going to benefit you quite a bit, from our experience.”
Moving forward, the two plan to study what exactly it is about these super shoes that allows people to run faster, hoping to identify the exact mechanism at work. They also hope to explore how surfaces, such as a road or a track, can influence performance.
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