There has been a lot of chatter about the Nike Vaporfly shoes and whether they give an unfair advantage. Having worn them I can definitely say they give you some sort of edge. How much of an advantage I think varies from person to person, but they are not going to hurt your performance.

I bought them because I knew I was going to be putting in a serious block of training and wanted to maximize my performance. I was doing the training to run PRs so why not use the technology at my disposal to complement that?

Some people argue these shoes should be banned and I am not entirely against that. I think there should be some parameters on how far we can go with shoe technology, but I am not enough of an expert to know where that line is. I do look at other sports and how they adapted their rules. Golf for instance has more restrictions on the equipment that pros can use compared to weekend warriors. Cycling has strict limits on weight.

The issue isn’t whether weekend warriors are running faster, it’s the integrity of the records and the fairness at the elite level. If Athlete A represents Nike and Athlete B represents Asics and each has to wear their respective company shoes is that fair?