A newly published study is adding nuance to one of the more familiar narratives in distance running: that carbon-plated super shoes simply make athletes faster. Research by Maruo and Takezawa, published in Frontiers in Physiology, examined split data from the World Marathon Majors to ask a more specific question — not whether advanced footwear technology (AFT) has changed marathon times, but how it has changed the way athletes race.
The researchers compared 5km split velocities from what they defined as the AFT era, 2022 to 2025, against a pre-AFT baseline of 2013 to 2015. Rather than treating the shoe era as a single variable that simply lowers finishing times across the board, the study isolated which segments of a marathon show the biggest change in pace, offering a more granular picture of where the technology's effect is actually concentrated.
The broader pattern to emerge, consistent with commentary from other analysts examining the same data, is what might be called a pacing paradox: finish times have continued to improve in the super shoe era even though late-race slowdown, relative to early pace, has if anything become more pronounced. The shoes appear to make an aggressive early pace feel more sustainable than it actually is, encouraging faster starts that still produce faster finishes overall, but not without a cost in the closing miles.
That distinction matters because it cuts against a simple reading of super shoe performance gains. Improved running economy from AFT does not expand glycogen stores, blunt heat stress, or remove the physiological consequences of starting too fast — it simply changes the maths of how much speed can be banked early before the inevitable fade sets in, and by how much.
For everyday marathoners taking the same technology to start lines around the world, the practical lesson mirrors the elite data: a faster shoe is not a substitute for disciplined pacing. Runners are better served practising goal pace in their race-day shoes, fuelling aggressively enough to support it, and building long runs that reveal what sustainable speed actually feels like deep into a marathon, rather than letting the shoe's feel of ease in the first half dictate a pace the second half cannot repay.