Comment by justinsaccount | Hacker News Reader

Comment by justinsaccount | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Running sneakers are a relatively new invention.

This is true, humans have been running for thousands of years without them.

> You wouldn't want to run a marathon in whatever the ancient greeks wore.

why not?

> Abebe Bikila (August 7, 1932 – October 25, 1973) was an Ethiopian double Olympic marathon champion. He won the marathon at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome while running barefoot, setting a world record.

He finished in 2:15:16.2

Or take Roger Bannister: [1]

> Sir Roger clocked three minutes 59.4 seconds in the historic race at Iffley Road Track in Oxford on 6 May 1954 when he was a 25-year-old medical student.

> The thin leather running spikes which weigh just four and a half ounces were snapped up by an anonymous buyer at the auction in South Kensington, London.

I don't know about you, but I can't run a 2:15 marathon or a 4 minute mile, and I don't think fancy shoes would make the difference.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/11/roger-bannis...

>why not?

We didn't evolve to run on tarmac or concrete. Public roads are strewn with broken glass and fragments of metal. Regular distance running is punishing on your joints, even if you're a forefoot runner with perfect form.

> Regular distance running is punishing on your joints, even if you're a forefoot runner with perfect form.

The studies I'm aware of (e.g. [1]) point in the opposite direction: runners have a lower risk of osteoarthritis, potentially because they have a lower BMI. As an avid long distance runner myself, if you have any evidence to the contrary, I'd be very interested to read it.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23377837

I did not see the original source, but this secondary source shows that running is the second most injurious sport, right behind football.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3724624/How-running-...

I would be skeptical about any claim supported by a Daily Mail link. I couldn't find any references to the study they "cited" on Google Scholar, either.

Okay, but we did evolve to run on dirt and rock, neither of which are particularly soft. Equally important, studies indicate that impact does not decrease when running on softer surfaces. Runner instinctively step harder on soft surfaces and more softer on hard surfaces, to get the same feedback from their feet and legs.

FWIW, four years later he won the Tokyo Olympics marathon wearing Pumas in a new world-record time of 2:12:11.2.

Which just goes to prove the point that it's the person, not the equipment, that determines performance at that level.

How do you know that. How do you know the improvement was not because now he was using shoes.

> I don't know about you, but I can't run a 2:15 marathon or a 4 minute mile, and I don't think fancy shoes would make the difference.

But for those that can, fancy shoes make a massive difference.

When you get to the highest levels of competition in any event, it's almost exclusively the little things that make the biggest difference. This is because the greatest athletes/competitors will have mastered most everything else surrounding their sport/event and the only differences that remain between them lay in the minute details.

Let's say at that level who wins any given race depends mostly on how good indiviuals feel on the day of competition, not some "edge" that can be kept improving on, because they all did all of their homework.

Would that be so bad? I imagine if I had trained so hard for so long, and overcome so much, I would rather accept that I'm in a group of people who "are all so good it's impossible to tell who is the best", than have it decided by who has the bigger R&D department.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com