Cowtown marathon should be won with new Nike’s “cheat code” shoe
Nike made running popular and now, to some, it’s ruining it, too.
Fort Worth will host its annual Cowtown Marathon this weekend, and all of the records are going down because of a shoe technology that comes from Nike when it feels like it’s from NASA.
“These shoes are like running on trampolines,” said Elizabeth Northern of Fort Worth, who has won every category in the Fort Worth Cowtown Marathon. She ran in her second U.S. Olympic marathon trials on Saturday. She finished 73rd with a time of two hours, 42 minutes and 41 seconds.
“The shoe technology is so good it is on the brink of falsifying someone’s actual ability. It’s weird. If you run a 7:30 mile in regular shoes, you will run a seven-minute mile in these shoes.”
Which means if I had those shoes, I would have won the 2009 Fort Worth Cowtown Marathon when I completed my third, and final, self-inflicted march of stupidity. OK, not exactly true but ... it feels like it could be true.
The Nike shoes are called “Vaporfly.” They should be called, “Cheat Code.” They weigh as much as a 166-ounce glass of air. Every step is spring-loaded, and you land on a cushion.
When Eliud Kipchoge set a new world record when he completed a marathon in Vienna in less than two hours last year, he was wearing the prototype.
Are these shoes cheating? No. These aren’t steroids, PEDs, or an Uber ride to the finish line. But these shoes sit right on that invisible line.
The basic activity of running has finally entered the same territory as golf, baseball and others where the technology made a breakthrough so significant it will define an era, and re-define achievement.
Because the Olympics are happy bed-partners with Nike, and since there is almost no way to monitor the runners who use shoes that feature the carbon-plate technology, no organization is disqualifying what are going to be a slew of new records.
The Cowtown Marathon said it will not prohibit runners from wearing these new rocket shoes. When the winner crosses on Sunday with a new Cowtown record, it will stand.
No asterisk, as some in the running community have suggested.
World Athletics, the international body that governs track and field, released a new set of guidelines and rules last month. The shoes created by Nike, and which are in the process of being copied by the other big shoe brands such as Brooks, Hoka and Saucony, are fine.
Since the shoes are allowed by law, and sold commercially, they’re “legal.” They’re not steroids, even if they have the same effect of a syringe.
Under the ankle, on the side of the shoe, Nike wrote, “Measured in the lab. Verified with medals & records.”
Per The New York Times, the five fastest marathon times have all been recorded by runners wearing the Vaporfly shoes.
Representatives from Luke’s Locker in Fort Worth as well as the Fort Worth Running Company said the shoes cost about $250 a pair. They also said the shoes are engineered to last about 250 miles.
That’s $1 per mile.
Both stores said they routinely run out of popular sizes.
Runners prefer to train in one pair of “regular” running shoes, and then switch to the high-performance model on race day.
Northern wore the new shoes when she ran the 50K in the International Association of Ultrarunners World Championships in Romania last year.
“It is the certain percentage of efficiency that adds up over a distance,” she said. “You are seeing records being dropped right and left.”
When Northern ran in the 2016 U.S. Olympic marathon trials, 205 women qualified for the event by meeting the two hours, 45 minute time.
With the same time standard, according to USA Track and Field, 511 women qualified for the 2020 event.
It’s Gotta Be the Shoes.
The problem within the sport is that people like Northern feel like these shoes are illegal, even if wearing them has been declared legal.
“I don’t know how I feel about now that I know everything. Some of it is my Catholic guilt,” she said. “And some of it’s, ‘Why not let technology have it’s place? We have advanced in all sort of other areas. Why not this?’
“And then there is the, ‘Just because everyone is jumping off a bridge, will I?’”
Northern did indeed jump on Saturday in Atlanta. She ran with the new shoes at the trials.
The sport decided the technology that allowed a man to run 26.2 miles in under two hours is OK.
And now all runners want to Just Do It.
This story was originally published February 28, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
