If you follow along in running news then you would have lived under a rock to have missed the Break2 attempt from Nike. An awesome project to give a serious attempt to break the two hour time on the marathon distance.
Nike has released a consumer version of the shoes used in the project, Nike Vaporfly, said to give you as a runner a 4% improvement. Right out of the box!
Now have some data scientist at NY Times crunched public data from Strava.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/upshot/nike-vaporfly-shoe-strava.html
It is an interesting study and they are good at discussing the different models used.
The study tries the hypothesis that Vaporfly will give you a 4% improvement in different models.
- A statistical model, based on runners’ ages, genders, race histories and other information, to measure the effect of shoes
- Comparing changes in race times among groups of runners who ran the same pairs of races
- Measuring finish times after runners switch to new shoes
And compared how common a personal record is when switching shoes.
In all these models the Vaporfly ranked highest, except for the last one where it was second. Giving some substance to the Nike claim of 4% improvement.