Super Spikes will debut in the Tokyo Olympics five years after Nike 4%, Next% and Alphafly subvert marathons. Yes, from super running shoes to super spikes! Just like those marathon enthusiasts who are obsessed with speed training, they have recently "invested" their first pair of nail shoes!
2016 Olympic Games Although no one noticed at the time, the top three men's marathons and women's marathon champions were wearing camouflaged Nike prototypes with thick midsoles and curved carbon fiber boards, a type of shoe that was later found to be 4% more efficient than the best road racing shoes of the time. In the next few years, the rapid development of running shoes technology has almost become the only topic of discussion among runners.
now enters the sequel. In Tokyo, all this is related to track and field studs. In fact, since the 2019 Doha World Championships, Super Spikes have begun to contact the majority of athletes.
In track and field, superspikes that also have a new generation of midsole materials and carbon plates are breaking the record—but so far, no one is completely sure how they work, how much time they can save, and whether competitor footwear companies can beat Nike’s lead.
Although the original Vaporfly were sold based on their scientifically based performance advantages, the new super spikes were not accompanied by any specific statement about how fast they were. In fact, you don't even know how you'll test it because of the physiological differences between mid- and long-distance running and marathons. But a new preprint from a team of the University of Massachusetts Amherst led by Wouter Hoogkamer and Laura Healey (meaning a peer-reviewed academic paper) attempted for the first time to explain how the superspikes might work, and what the key components are.
It was Hoogkamer who conducted the initial study with his colleagues in the Rodger Kram research group at the University of Colorado that showed that Nike's Vaporfly was 4% more efficient than competitors' shoes. But his tests on Vaporfly only work at relatively slow running speeds, so for track and field shoes, all we have is the blurry feeling that people run very fast. Since the 2019 prototype debut, both men and women’s world records for 5000 meters and 10000 meters have been broken. The indoor 1500 meters for women and the indoor 1500 meters for men were also broken. The university records are getting faster, and the high school records are getting faster, and some things are happening quietly.
There are some other explanations as well. Most notably, the pace technique of Wavelight track and field increases the possibility of trying to break the record, and this approach forces athletes to do their best throughout the schedule. But most observers believe that new nail shoes are providing meaningful time savings. It's hard to imagine Reebok and Brooks wouldn't let their athletes run in Nike shoes in Olympic Trials if they don't believe there is a real effect.
According to Hoogkamer's definition, Super spikes "combine lightweight, soft, elastic foam (and airbag) with hard (nylon/PEBA/carbon fiber) plates". foam and board are also significant features of Vaporfly and similar marathon shoes, but there are some differences. According to the current world track and field rules, the sole of the road shoes can reach 40 mm thick; track and field studs above 800 meters can only be 25 mm thick. There are also nails at the bottom of the shoe nails, aiming to grab the rubber surface of the runway.
When the initial Vaporfly was launched, most people focused on curved carbon fiber boards, which people thought could act as a "spring". But most of the subsequent research overturned this view.In fact, another upcoming study by Healey and Hoogkamer tested runners wearing regular Vaporflys shoes and six parallel cuts on the carbon plate to eliminate any connection between the hind and forefoot. Surprisingly, the economy of running is basically not affected by cutting carbon plates. What might be possible for carbon plates, but simple pictures of spring shoes don't seem to explain its performance.
For decades, biomechanical researchers have been studying carbon fiber boards, and they tend to think of carbon fiber boards as leverage or reinforcement devices rather than springs. There is good evidence that hardboards can save some energy under the right conditions, otherwise you will waste on bent big toes. But all kinds of evidence, including sawed Vaporflys and the fact that nails always have a hard nail board, suggests that hard shoe panels themselves are not the secret to making super shoes so good.
On the contrary, the most obvious change between the new and old nailed shoes is the addition of a layer of cushioning foam. New foams include PEBA (polyetheramide), TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) and various other custom blends, unlike traditional midsole materials in three key ways: they are lighter, more compressible, and more elastic (meaning they rebound after being compressed, returning most of the energy you use to compress them). Old shoes do all the same; new shoes just do better. The traditional EVA midsole gives back less than 70% of the energy input, while the new technology foam gives back more than 85% of the energy.
A more subtle difference between super spikes is the geometric shape. In addition to the thicker heels, they also have a very obvious rocker, or an upturned toe. Last year, Benno Nigg, a researcher at the University of Calgary, proposed that the performance of Vaporfly is the result of a "seesaw effect", where the heels will be ejected from the ground when stepping on the curved toes of the carbon plate. Again, the sawed Vaporflys objected to this particular theory, but it is worth noting that no one can manage to make a super shoe without some kind of curved plate, so geometry may be important, but the reason is not clear.
OK, so we already have a lot of theories. Why not test them? One problem is that
Hoogkamer and his co-authors point out that track and field shoes do not have a mass market like road shoes. If you are selling hundreds of thousands of shoes, it makes sense to optimize the general parameters of shoes. For niche products like spikes, sports product companies are more interested in customizing parameters based on the individual needs of their star athletes.
But there is a more basic problem. Road shoes are tested based on running economy, which is an indicator of how much energy you consume when running at a given speed. You can estimate energy consumption by measuring the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide the runner inhales and exhales — but this estimate is only effective if you do aerobic running (i.e. below the threshold). Once you start running faster, you will be increasingly relying on anaerobic energy, and breath-based calculations become meaningless. track and field studs are designed for fast running, so the test of jogging at marathon pace in mid- and long-distance studs won't tell you much.
On the other hand, you can test the sprint peak by having people sprint with all their might in different modes and time them. But the new super spikes are designed for a tricky "gray" zone, trying to optimize metabolic efficiency while running at less fast speeds. There is no good test in . The best option is probably to play a series of time trials over the relevant game distance, but it is a very slow and painful way to collect data.
also has the potential to adopt big data approaches, such as the excellent analysis of Vaporfly data on Strava in 2018. But there are much less data available for track and field competitions, and the world rankings for 2020 and 2021 are severely affected by the coronavirus (whether good or bad is not clear). It may take some time before we can make meaningful estimates of the speed of new peaks, not to mention how different models compare.
So far, two super spikes from Nike have become the topic: Air Zoom Victory, which uses carbon fiber board and PEBA foam; and ZoomX Dragonfly, which uses PEBA board and PEBA foam. They have been the shoes behind most new records and great performances, although it’s hard to know how much of this is simply because Nike sponsors top athletes. New balance’s FuelCell MD-X, which features carbon fiber board and TPU foam, has attracted attention since its debut at the 2019 World Championships, and perhaps most notably, Elle Purrier, Cory McGee and Heather MacLean swept the 1500-meter event last month at the U.S. Olympic Trials.
Adidas, ASICS, Brooks, Hoka, Saucony and Puma have similar models on the market or in prototypes. It is very difficult to know who is wearing which shoes and which ones are really selling on the market, let alone which shoes are really as effective as advertised. This means that when we watch the race in Tokyo, shoes will be an inevitable subtext: we will stare at the screen and wonder "What is the fourth person wearing? Should he be on the podium?" Just like the improvement of marathon average performance in recent years, is the runners getting stronger or the running shoes getting stronger!
However, the situation could have been worse. If the Olympics were held as scheduled last summer, the competition situation would have tilted sharply, almost a replica of 2016, which would affect more events. The year's delays have eased supply tightness (although getting a pair of shoes is still a challenge for the average runner) and allowed most other companies to participate. Companies that haven’t caught up are generally getting their athletes to run in competitors’ shoes. I doubt we won't see many long-distance runners in the finals without a pad and a layer of foam under the soles of their shoes. So please enjoy the game, enjoy tactical battles, enjoy head-on competition... Maybe there is no need to pay too much attention to breaking the world record?
Do you want to try nailed shoes?
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