Kite-surfing fabrics, car tires and shortened shoelaces helped Kenyan Sabastian Sawe and Adidas crack the two-hour marathon barrier.
When Sawe on Sunday shattered one of athletics’ most elusive barriers in storming to victory at the London Marathon in 1 hour, 59 minutes, 30 seconds, it did not come from just physiology and grit, but from design choices drawn from far beyond the course.
Sawe debuted Adidas’ lightest-ever racing shoe, the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3.
Photo: Reuters
“It starts with the mentality of the athlete, the coach, and the team behind the product, which is: What can we do better? What is the 1 percent of every single detail that we can improve?” Adidas general manager of running Patrick Nava said. “And so we got to a product that is 97g, which is 30 percent lighter than the previous iteration.”
“We worked on the outsole. We left traction only where you need it. We took it away where you don’t, and worked together with [tire manufacturer] Continental to create an extremely thin rubber piece,” he said.
The largest weight saving came in the foam, with Adidas cutting the weight of its foam by 50 percent from the previous version.
Photo: Reuters
“We looked at other industries for inspiration for the upper,” Nava said. “In this case, you have a material that is inspired by what you can find in kite-surfing, extremely light, but also extremely durable.”
Even the laces were redesigned and shortened, saving a further 2g to 3g.
The result is a shoe that improves running economy by 1.6 percent compared with the Evo 2, Nava said.
Sawe’s victory comes more than a decade after Kenyan great Eliud Kipchoge wore an early, prototype version of Nike’s Vaporfly to win the 2016 London Marathon, the first major marathon ever won in a super shoe.
Geoff Burns, a sports researcher and engineer, and a sports physiologist for the US Olympic and Paralympic Committees, said the benefits of super shoes extend beyond the race itself.
“That’s one of the main benefits, you don’t feel the trauma of running. That is probably a benefit that contributed to Sawe’s world record; it’s not just that the shoes are beneficial in taking time off the clock, it’s that they do allow you to do more specific training, at marathon race speed or close to it,” he said.
If elite marathoners typically covered up to 140 miles (225km) a week, “these guys now are running 150, maybe 160, maybe even 170 miles a week,” Burns said. “So they’re doing a good bit more training, but more of that training is faster and close to marathon speeds, which is afforded by those shoes.”
“Ninety-seven grams, I have socks that are heavier than that,” he added.
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