CUriosity: Can your running shoes really make you faster?
In CUriosity, experts across the CU 91Ҹ campus answer questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.
In honor of the , we asked integrative physiologist Bradley Needles what makes a “super shoe” super, and whether such footwear can help everyday runners improve their times.
Bradley Needles at the indoor practice facility at CU 91Ҹ. (Credit: Paige Hellebrand/CU 91Ҹ)
On Sunday, April 26, Kenyan Sebastian Sawe broke through the tape at the London Marathon in a stunning 1 hour, 59 minutes and 30 seconds, becoming the first person to ever run an official 26.2-mile race in under two hours.
Training, nutrition and mindset all undoubtedly played a role. But much ado has also been made about his shoes—a chunky-looking set of black and white Adidas racing flats, which were quickly whisked away to a museum, his historic time scrolled on the side.
Weighing just 97 grams (less than a bar of soap), the shoes were the latest iteration in a new generation of Advanced Footwear Technology, also known as “super shoes,” that have been helping elite runners crush records for a decade.
But can they also help mere mortals just wanting to shave a few minutes off their 10K?
“Definitely,” says Bradley Needles, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Integrative Physiology who studies performance-running footwear.
A lifelong competitive runner, Needles found his way to CU 91Ҹ after learning that some of the first scientific studies of super shoes were done here.
“The idea that I could do academic research about something I am so passionate about was a real draw,” he said.
In fact, the original super shoe, the Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4%, got its name from a study at CU 91Ҹ. 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.
Today’s super shoes weigh about half what that shoe weighed, and some are said to improve “running economy”—essentially the human body’s version of fuel efficiency—even more.
That could enable a four-hour marathoner to cross the finish line about six and a half minutes faster, or a determined 10K runner to trim off a minute and finally squeeze their way into the coveted “sub-40 club” for those who have run a 10K in less than 40 minutes.
“We have seen it over and over again in our lab,” said Needles. “When runners of all types, whether they are accustomed to them or not, put on these shoes, they use less energy to run.”
And less energy typically equates to faster times.
So what makes the shoes so fast?
There are three key ingredients, said Needles: an ultralight high-energy-returning foam, a thick midsole made up of that foam and a rigid spoon-like plate embedded in the sole.
Just how these all work together to make running feel easier remains a bit of a mystery—one Needles and his advisor, Integrative Physiology Professor Alena Grabowski, are working to unravel.
But previous studies suggest a few things are happening:
The thicker the midsole, the more time your foot spends on the ground, enabling you to push off harder. (Sawe’s midsole was a chunky 39 millimeters thick—just a hair thinner than the maximum allowed.)
The high-tech foam cushion absorbs the bulk of the impact when your foot hits the ground, so the runner’s legs stay stiffer and the calf muscles don’t have to work so hard.
The spoon-like plate, made either of lightweight carbon fiber or rigid plastic, may act like a see-saw, propelling the runner forward with each step.
All this may also serve to make running easier on the body, as some runners have reported they can work out harder and recover more easily after wearing super shoes.
But they are not cheap. A pair of Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3s (the shoes Sawe was wearing) retail for a cool $500 or more, if you can find them; .
And they don’t tend to last long—around 100 to 150 miles compared with 300 to 400 miles for regular running shoes. Needles recommends saving them for races and a few runs beforehand to get used to them.
But they’re getting easier for everyday runners to find, with some running as low as $200.
“Pretty much every major shoe company makes a good super shoe now that will be tangibly better, running performance-wise, than your everyday trainer,” said Needles.
He’ll be slipping on his own super shoes—Nike Vaporfly 3s—at the BOLDER91Ҹ start line in a few days.
As always, he got them on sale.