Fortunately for climbing, this hasn't been much of a problem. Possibly due to the fact that everyone has access to the same shoes. Another possibility is that competition climbing has only become popular in something like the last decade, significantly after the shoe revolution started.
The analogy is imperfect as climbing isn't timed* but it should be interesting to watch this play out.
* Excluding speed climbing and maximum time limits.
The latest shoe from La Sportiva (I think it's the Theory) is designed for indoor / competition use, and basically has changes in design to cater for common materials and shapes of holds used in modern competition. It's not really an evolution of climbing shoe design, more a specialization.
If we treat running more like Formula 1 racing, for instance, the sport is elevated beyond just that of runner vs. runner (or in F1, racer vs. racer). Technology improvements the the highest level allow for technology improvements for the rest of world, beyond the sport. This is one of my favorite aspects of F1 racing... the constant innovation that happens in these vehicles, and how that innovation reverberates through the auto industry in the form of aerodynamics, fuel efficiency, weight:stability improvements, and so on.
I hear where you are coming from, but isn't the existence of the Vaporfly essential to push all footwear technology forward?
As someone who has multiples of the above, various trail and road shoes, and two pairs of Vapors too... to me the difference doesn’t appear to be obvious energy return like you’d expect with something like Pistorius’ blades. The return and cushioning seems on par with my old ASICS. The aggressive design underfoot though basically mandates efficient technique. My barefoot options do the same but through being quite unforgiving and painful if you get sloppy.
Also worth pointing out that when I first put them on I definitely got the pace bump advertised but it came at a considerable stamina cost. They encouraged/forced me to run faster but it took quite a while to build back up to being able to maintain that for the distances I’d previously run.
At the beginning F1 was decided mostly by the pilots skills, then increasingly by training. Then technology took the spotlight and was the way to have an edge, and now finally it’s the best lawyering what gets you wins.
I’m guessing is that is some kind of pattern you can’t avoid.
First the athletes compete, then competition gets fierce and simple selection does not cut it, training is required to be at the top of the game. Then when we hit the limits of what’s possible for a human only tech can step in and give you the edge.
Then tech improvements subvert the statu quo and regulation is demanded, regulation kills innovation and brings in a new game, the winner is whoever can argue that they’re not breaking the rules, just bending them a little.
So then it would be a case of building a car that just barely didn't kill the most capable human.
That was F1 in the 60s, when you saw all sorts of weird stuff.
It's just in the very early days the guys building the cars would also drive their own car.
There’s also something really neat about feeling the ground under your feet, the textures, the temperatures, the refreshing moisture of grass, and being able to actually use your feet for traction. Your toes exist for a reason.
If we’re talking about pure athleticism, and taking a technological advantage out of the equation, then I really don’t see why this couldn’t be the way forwards.
There's the issue though isn't it?
There's no F1 at the Olympics.
So running can be changed to be all about tech, but then the Olympic Committee is gonna have a bit to say about things. They have to treat all sports fairly after all. Add to that the fact that they've already proved that nothing is sacred when they dumped wrestling. (Wrestling was, at least to my mind, one of the original sports even in antiquity. They had no problem at all jettisoning it.) And you end up in an environment where Track and Field has to be a bit careful about where we step. We already have, let's say, not the best reputation because of doping. We really didn't need any new headaches. (In all honesty though, I think the wrestling thing woke a lot of sports federations up. A lot of sports are being a bit more careful about things these days. So trying to avoid the attention of the Olympic Committee is definitely not just Track and Field.)
Well sure. But there IS skiing in the Olympics, and that is a sport that is defined by (pun) cutting-edge technology. The constant jockeying for slight improvements makes all skis that much better. Of course, we remember the "cheat suits" worn by some lugers a Winter Olympics' ago, which was a pretty controversial thing but all considered I was on the side of "well, they just showed up better equipped..."
In the former case machine is the subject; and humans are innovating to evolve them to next level.
In the later case, assumption is that all humans are at same level of evolution and race is among equal - ideally marathon and races should be bare bodied and bare foot; but if we are making concessions for comfort, it should not be seen as license to augment human capabilities.
Aero innovation is still ongoing, times are going down even with the simpler formula due to the engineers finding new ways to increase DF. It's only now starting to converge more because the rules have been somewhat stable on the PU side since 2014. Aero had a big change last year for turbulence reduction and increasing speeds.
Let’s not kid ourselves, distance races are still all (99%) about the runner. You aren’t going to strap these shoes on and challenge Kipchoge in a marathon. You still have to put in an absolutely absurd amount of training time to compete. These shoes do not make you fit. For easy math, if you run a marathon in 2 hours and 5 minutes, the VaporFlys. may drop you down to 2 hours. Rallying against this just seems silly.
And shoes of any type give all sorts of advantages that have “improved” running relative to how it was at the dawn of time: stability, grip, cushioning, warmth/cooling depending on conditions, and now a small kinetic energy return. Why is the last one the only one to go?
And yes I won't challenge Kipchoge but a lot of runners who were quite a bit worse than me are now running similar times to me, using the vaporflys. There is a competition/fairness issue at the sub-elite as well as elite levels.
But anyway I feel that storing and releasing kinetic energy is different than stability, grip, cushioning, temperature control. By the way I don't care if people train in things like Vaporflys just like I don't care if they train on a bicycle. But this is all just my opinion.
The Real Science of Sport Podcast has a great episode which dives into the technical details of how the Nike shoes actually work. https://play.acast.com/s/realscienceofsport/bee6a41a-0d6d-4d...
I assume this means that major , public competitions would diminish in popularity, and fewer people pursuing the sport as a job would choose that sport.
I’m failing to see how either of those is objectively bad, though.
Well, in a Greek race you had to run naked. ;p
Vaproflies have a ridiculous 31-36mm cushion....
I'm pretty sure your parent was asking: why that particular height? 1 inch seems wildly arbitrary.
And if the height is arbitrary, why the hate for the Vaporfly? What is the technical reason for setting the limit so as to exclude the shoe?
1inch is sort of focal I figure. Kind of like so many people choosing random states to be 42
...except that people's feet are different, and some people probably run better in different shoes. So technology is back. You need to force everyone to run in Roman caligae. Naked. But expect more injuries and forget breaking records.
UCSI also has strict regulations about bike dimensions, weight and even the kind of brakes that can be used. The min weight for a bike is around 15 lbs (think its actually 14.9, but I'm not up to date on current rules as ive stopped racing). Last I heard, disk brakes were not allowed for road racing, despite significant improvements to braking distance and safety in inclement conditions (I know a rule change was being considered a few years ago, so this might be different now). Oddly, they allowed electric deralliers without a rule change.
Even if we don’t go to the length of running without shoes, enforcing a single shoe model, with something as close as possible to bare 5 finger socks could have been a choice made a long time ago. But it didn’t happen, so why would we be now crying over shoes that do a little too much ?
I then bought a pair of 'mundane' running shoes (Mizunu Waverider 9s) and literally overnight my one mile time dropped to 7 minutes. Thirty seconds just gone after upgrading my shoes.
Where do you draw the line at how much tech is too much tech?
Even at my modest, better than average leg strength, I can easily exceed the frictional coefficient between my shoes and a track.
As funny as it would be to see the entire field eat shit coming out of the blocks, it'd get old after the first dozen times.
To me, running is a non-mechanically-aided sport. The moment a shoe attempts to store and return mechanical energy in the stride, to me, that's a different sport.
We already know that people can go faster and farther with mechanical aid, if you use big enough springs on your feet. Look at the discussion around Pistorius' blades. Let alone something like putting wheels on your shoes.
So we know from first principles that there's going to be some limit to the mechanical advantage that footwear is allowed to provide. The only question is where to draw the line.
Now you could draw the line at providing any mechanical advantage at all, and keep the sport the same as it's been since the dawn of time. Or you could draw the line a little bit farther along, making the sport partially about the runner and partially about the technology. I see no coherent reason to do the latter, except for shoe companies' profits. It hurts the fairness of the sport, it takes a bunch of fun out of it, it transfers a whole bunch of money from a previously-dirt-cheap sport to the shoe companies, etc.