These ‘super shoes’ are helping runners break records, but are they for you?
By Sarah Berry
At the Nike Melbourne Marathon in October, where Australian Olympic silver medallist Jessica Hull rang the starting bell, a record-breaking 34 women ran sub-three-hour marathons, and new race records were set for both male and female categories in the half-marathon.
And it’s a trend around the world.
Changing the race: The super shoe.Credit: ASICS
At the London Marathon in April, four female athletes bolted to the finish line, all beating the previous women’s world record. And in Valencia last Sunday, marathon runner Andy Buchanan smashed the Australian men’s record, while Izzi Batt Doyle became the Australian women’s third-fastest marathon runner in history. Times are also getting faster among amateurs.
These improvements are largely attributed to the booming popularity of the sport and to advances in shoes.
“When it comes to how fast you can do a marathon, shoe technology is making a huge difference,” says athlete, physiotherapist and ASICS Australia ambassador Pat McNamara. “There’s no denying that.”
But these new high-performance running shoes aren’t changing the race for everyone. In fact, for some, they can hinder rather than help.
In foam form
From minimalist to maximalist shoes, one constant idea of the past was that a shoe ought to limit pronation and create stability.
However, research debunked the myth that pronation was bad about a decade ago and designers turned their attention to new forms of foam.
“Back in the days all shoes had classic EVA foam,” says On’s director of innovation technology and research, Nils Altrogge.
“Now, this new foam family is much lighter than EVA and much more bouncy with a higher rebound. And this, in combination with a higher stack height, brings a very reactive and bouncy running feeling.”
The new breed of performance shoe is changing the way we run.Credit: On
While each brand has its secret foam sauce – On, for instance, creates holes in its compound-engineered foam for softness and efficiency, while Nike’s lightest, most responsive foam Zoom X derives from aerospace innovation– the lightness and bounciness serves two functions: comfort and speed.
“We recurrently hear that, no matter the type of run, what [athletes] love the most is cushioning,” says Tony Bignell, vice president of Footwear Innovation at Nike.
Plus, adds McNamara: “It’s difficult to have high cadence in a bulky shoe.”
A carbon-plated boost
The second key innovation in this new breed of high-performance shoe was carbon.
Whack a carbon plate or rods in the midsole of that light, highly stacked foam shoe, and you have yourself a super shoe. These design additions provide structure and propulsive speed.
“If you can run at a certain pace, you can basically bend [the carbon] and it releases you forward as you take every step,” says Sam Chew, the general manager of product at ASICS. “It gives you that spring effect [and] propels you forward in a way that a shoe that only has a midsole cannot do.”
Though Bignell says Nike is “the pioneer of the super shoe”, other brands have created their own super creations, all of which contain fresh foams and carbon inserts.
Getting faster by the minute: Peres Jepchirchir.Credit: Getty
Eliud Kipchoge wore the Nike Alphafly to run a marathon in less than two hours in 2019, but Buchanan and Batt Doyle wore ASICS Metaspeed Edge in Valencia last weekend. This year’s, London Marathon’s female winner Peres Jepchirchir wore adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1, while the Boston Marathon’s female winner wore On’s Cloudboom Strike LS Dev 1.2.
“They don’t physically make you run faster, but they reduce the energy cost of running,” says McNamara. “A 4 to 5per cent increase in running economy makes a huge difference when you’re running a marathon.”
These shoes can also help during the shorter distances, says Hull, a 1500-metre runner.
As a young athlete, Hull often ran barefoot on the grass. “My dad – my coach – is a firm believer that the better the athlete’s biomechanics are, you don’t get as much from the shoe,” says the now 28-year-old.
Jessica Hull placed second in the 1500 metres at the Paris Olympics in August.Credit: Getty
Yet, in 2022, the Nike athlete adopted the Streakfly, which has a low stack height, Zoom X foam and is the brand’s lightest carbon-plated racing shoe.
“They don’t do the work for you, but they do help with recovery,” says Hull. “It’s layering another safety net to allow me to push pretty hard in training and then come back again 48 hours later.”
But are they for you?
Super shoes are accelerating the racing speed of elite athletes (they were never designed for training), but it doesn’t mean we all should wear them.
“They don’t actually work for less fast runners because they can’t generate the pace to activate the plate in the shoe, as well as a super bouncy midsole foam,” says Chew, a slow runner himself who prefers the more supportive, carbon-free Kayano.
Altrogge adds that the biggest benefit is to athletes who can run at a pace of less than four minutes per kilometre.
For the “everyday runner” he says: “It can create problems because they’re not used to have this high stack height, which is a little bit more unstable, especially when you’re running slower.”
He suggests opting for shoes that contain super foams without the carbon. “They have the soft and spongy feeling, but the plate makes it very aggressive.”
And, there is still a place for the heavier, more supportive “stability” shoe.
“The more active and strong and springy you are, the less support you need,” says McNamara, whose personal favourites are the ASICS Nova Blast and Super Blast.
“But, if I get someone who weighs 110 kilograms, and they are fairly sedentary, they would be better off with a bit more support, a bit more cushion,”
Ultimately, the best shoe is the one we find most comfortable because sport scientists have come to appreciate that there isn’t one best way to run (nor one best shoe for everyone).
“Running is like a fingerprint,” says Altrogge, who runs in the Cloudsurfer. “Everyone has a very individual running style.”
Comfort, he adds, means going out for a run and forgetting you’re wearing a shoe.
Imagining the impossible
Innovations in material engineering, the geometry of the shoes and plates and improved understanding of biomechanics will continue to influence shoe design, turning the needle on the speed dial, as well as the “shoeless” shoe feeling.
“The next generation of super shoes, let’s call them hyper shoes, has just started,” says Altrogge. “The goal of the future is: how can we create the feeling of a very high, soft super shoe, but which are lower stack height by better engineering?”
This will make them faster and more accessible to everyday runners.
Beyond performance and comfort, the goal is sustainability. In 2023, 21.9 billion pairs of running shoes were sold, most of which end up in landfill, where they can take up to 1000 years to decompose.
Fewer shoe components and smarter materials is key here, says Chew.
A faster, more sustainable, shoeless shoe. Is it really possible?
Bignell, who is a Pegasus fan, rules nothing out. With insights from athletes, and new digital tools, “to fuel creativity and wild experimentation, we can make the impossible possible”.
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