Amateurs catch on fast to rise of super shoes
Average times tumbled at last year’s London Marathon but carbon-backed trainers also help older runners keep going
At the end of a recent six-week block of altitude training in Kenya, British marathon runner Emile Cairess paused for a trackside interview. He said he was aiming for a “big PB” at Sunday’s London Marathon, before his chat with the Sweat Elite website was “video-bombed” by a training partner pointing to a pair of almost mythical Adidas Adios Adizero Pro Evo 1 carbon running shoes.
“I’m going to be wearing these,” Cairess said, grinning. “Nice upgrade. That’s going to give me a minute, I hope.”
These are the same 4.9oz shoes that were worn by Tigst Assefa last September when she demolished the women’s world record in 2hr 11min 53sec and which, despite being recommended for a single use, continue to fetch upwards of £800 on ebay. Assefa is being tipped for another world record on Sunday – and Cairess could threaten Mo Farah’s British record (2hr 5min 11sec) – but the bigger “super shoe” story will play out in London among the tens of thousands who follow.
Carbon-reinforced shoes with super responsive foam were first worn by elite runners in 2017, so the newest prototypes contain only marginal improvements, but in the past two years there have been variations of earlier models sweeping the mass market. Big price reductions have followed and it is fairly easy to buy a pair for £150 to £200.
The knock-on is already evident at recreational races every week. Research by Strava found that the average London Marathon time had improved by 12 minutes between 2022 and 2023 (from 4hr 18min to 4hr 6min).
It is something already being accounted for by London organisers, who have found that their traditional “good for age” time achievements that guarantee sought-after places risk becoming oversubscribed. The required standard for those 6,000 spots will be raised next year to take account of the super-shoe era.
Hugh Brasher, the event director, says: “Everyone’s really talking so much about the speed – and 100 per cent it helps the speed – but the foam that they’re using is of a consistency where the recovery is much better – the impact on your muscles is reduced.”
This observation is potentially even more significant than raceday improvement. Older runners now may be able to stay in the sport for longer, while heavier runners are at less risk of injury. And many more runners can contemplate moving up from perhaps a 5km Parkrun to the pounding of a marathon. At elite level, runners are finding they can absorb more training miles, so the equation between optimum volume and intensity is being experimented with.
There is no doubt that Kelvin Kiptum, who had rewritten the marathon record books at the age of 23 before his death in a car crash this year, was challenging conventional wisdom. Elite athletes traditionally moved up to the marathon only after years racing over shorter distances. The challenge of a marathon was supposedly so extreme that it risked ruining young legs.
Kiptum had no track background and, off the back of training weeks when he apparently touched 185 miles, seemed to be treating the marathon almost like a middle-distance race with his habit of finishing faster than he started. He was wearing the Nike Alphafly 3 shoes when he set the world record last year (2hr 00min 35sec), as was Sifan Hassan when she demonstrated in London that the 26.2-mile distance is perhaps no longer such a vast step up from a track 10,000m.
For the shoe companies, testing continues to find small advances in the next incarnation of an Alphafly or Pro Evo 1 and the newest models will continue to come at a huge premium. Adidas, for example, will put the Pro Evo 1 back on general sale next week at £450.
But the game-changing advances are already now widely available, leaving only a rapidly diminishing old guard still resolutely loyal to more traditional shoes. Why, after all, would you not make the switch if you can run faster and recover better at an increasingly comparable price?
There is talk now of designing shoes for amateurs that are more responsive than those in official competition, which remain governed by fairly arbitrary World Athletics rules on a maximum 40mm heel height.
Brasher believes that the advances should be welcomed, just as when his father, Chris, was innovating with titanium spikes when he won Olympic steeplechase gold in 1956. “Technology has always been at the forefront of moving society on,” he says.
Some have argued that the record books should be reordered to differentiate between shoe eras. We will never know, for example, if Assefa really was athletically superior to Paula Radcliffe.
“Technology moves on, science moves on and it’s happened in other sports,” says Eilish Mccolgan, who is fast rewriting her mother Liz’s records with the help of carbon-boosted shoes. Eilish is sponsored by Asics but speaks for many athletes in feeling relief that there does at least now appear to be an even playing field between brands.
“I’m happy now that every single shoe company has their own version of the super shoe,” she said. “There’s no doubt it brings a huge benefit from previous old-school racing flats and will perhaps help more people to run half marathons and marathons.”