shoe weight

Rickshaw · Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 9:26 am

I've often seen a bit of conventional widsom that claims that every ounce in shoe weight reduction translates to a 2 second/mile improvement in speed. Of course this assumes that you haven't shrunken your shoes to near zero weight, making your feet blow up due to lack of cushioning and causing you to end up hobbling home from mile 12. I also haven't seen the 2 second/mile figure attributed to anything scientific, so it may be bogus, but it appears pretty widely accepted.

Armed with this information, I decided to see what I could do about streamlining my shoe weight. First off, I weighed the foot pod of my Nike Triax Elite. 2 ounces. Gone. I won't be wearing that during races anymore. There's one more argument in favor of a GPS-based speed/distance monitor.

Then I weighed my shoes. For my men's size 12, my Asics GT2080's weigh about 14 ounces each. Ouch. My GT2100's are even heaver, at 14.7 ounces. My lightweight DS Trainers are 12.9 ounces. So I went shopping for some marathon-worthy race shoes. I didn't want to get anything too ridiculously flimsy, for fear of killing my feet, but it seemed like I could definitely save a bit more weight. I tried the Saucony Grid Fastwitch Endurance and Asics DS Racer's, but both felt weird and insubstantial. I liked the Brooks Racer ST 2's, though-- they felt pretty much like a regular shoe, despite weighing just 9.9 ounces!

So 3 ounces saved, times 2 seconds per mile, times 26.2 miles, means I should theoretically be able to shave more than 2.5 minutes off my marathon time. We'll see... I plan to try the Racer ST's in a couple of medium-long runs before the marathon, to make sure they provide adequate support and don't end up nuking my feet. Here's hoping!