Personally, I only wear mine in races, which seems to be the best of both worlds, giving you a performance boost without causing long-term harm.
What do you wear outside of races? I have been a happy barefoot/minimalist runner for a long time so I’ve never really bothered to follow changes in mainstream running shoe technology. Recently I started learning a bit more about the “super shoes” after watching the World Championships (Bruce wouldn’t STFU about them) and found it all pretty interesting.
For the last few years I’ve been wearing Asics Novablasts as my main shoe, and Tartheredge when doing interval workouts on track or packed dirt.
The Novablasts are about as far from barefoot as you can get. Really fat, cushiony shoe. Super comfy for very long distances. The Tartheredges are not a minimalist or barefoot shoe, but they’re about as minimal as you can get without being that. Extremely light-weight, very little cushioning.
The Novablasts are about as far from barefoot as you can get. Really fat, cushiony shoe. Super comfy for very long distances.
Are they different to a super shoe? Or is this your race shoe as well?
Super shoes have special types of foam designed to give maximum energy recovery, which the Novablasts lack. Their foam is more about shock absorption and comfort. And more famously, super shoes also include a carbon plate between layers of foam in the sole to further help with energy recovery, almost like a spring. The Novablasts lack this.
My racing shoes are the Metaspeed Sky, which over the last 3 and a bit years helped me break a 17:44 5k (previous PB: 18:54) and a sub-3:15 marathon (first marathon). Though obviously different training and circumstances mean that it’s hard to properly compare. Those paces are certainly not ceteris paribus.
My racing shoes are the Metaspeed Sky, which over the last 3 and a bit years helped me break a 17:44 5k (previous PB: 18:54)
So for a 5k, would you say the benefit is the speed you gain from being able to push yourself harder in a race? When I was researching them I found most people agreed that there was a big benefit for very long distances like the marathon, but for shorter distances like the 5k responses were a lot more varied. Some people thought super shoes were basically pointless for that distance (too short for meaningful recovery) whilst others thought they could improve times by wearing them but only because they allowed for harder training blocks and faster recovery before race day. But I haven’t seen too many people say outright that they run faster in a 5k with super shoes, although a guy at my Parkrun started wearing them last year.
The truth is that there isn’t a huge amount of good science about them, but most of the anecdotal evidence and the scant amount of research I have seen has suggested that yes, they do help over 5k, especially if you’re doing sub-4:00 min/k. It’s possible that some of this is just the psychological effect of “gearing up in your race gear”. But I don’t think that’s all they can do. Supposedly they help make every step that little bit more efficient, which directly translates not just into reduced energy usage, but into speed. There seems to be a large variance in how much they help depending on the individual and pace, but in general they work better at higher pace.
