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Comment by giarc

16 hours ago

Maybe even placebo effect?

Quite possible there's a psychological benefit from super shoes, they certainly feel fast. Though there are enough plausible mechanisms it's unlikely to be the major factor.

So you think the Vaporfly prototypes Kipchoge wore in 2018 placebo'd him into crushing the world record by 78 seconds?

  • There's an almost inhuman amount of mind over matter psychology when it comes to endurance running. Unless you can duplicate reality multiple times and swap out the shoes without anyone knowing to do properly scientific testing, we can't know for sure what did it. (The shoes probably helped.)