January 10, 2019
I have talked up the Nike Vaporfly 4% many times on my blog but still people race wearing other brands so I’m going to try one more time to make you see the light before moving on to the next running product. How good are these shoes ? Very, very good. Do you need a pair ? If you are serious about running yes, you need a pair and yesterday. Can you get a pair ? Probably not, they sell out quicker than a Rolling Stones concert at your local old peoples home, and that is fast ! What makes them so good ? Easy, you run faster for longer with less effort ; as there say on the show 4% performance increase for a perceived 4% less expelled energy; that’s right people they really make you faster while also making it easier to achieve these new found pace. I mean why wouldn’t you buy a pair , unless you want to stay the same pace and not get a 4% increased performance boost for nothing ? Well when I say nothing they do coast $350 AUD or similar but c’mon, a 4% performance increase for $350; I’ll take that all day. I reckon to get that through training alone you’d have to put in 1,000 – 2,000 kilometres of hard yakka. $350 is cheap at double the price…
Right, so after Nike sponsored the breaking 2 adventure ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ZLG-Fij_4 ) and came so close they have created the marketing man dreams of a shoe with demand far outstripping supply thus keeping the price inflated. I know I said $350 was a small price to pay, and I stand by that, but it’s still a large amount of money for a running shoe, to the untrained eye (Unfortunately No1 Wife has a couple of those untrained eye’s and I still haven’t mentioned what I paid for my second pair of fly’s, well over retail and I mean well over retail !! Never got to use them, to add insult to injury , excuse the pun, as I picked up a nasty case of Plantar Fasciitis virtually the week after buying them. The Lord really does move in mysterious ways sometimes ?)
I brought a couple of version ones I suppose but managed to snag a pair of the latest and greatest via http://www.nike.com.au, these bad boys pictured above are the fly knit versions with a one piece flyknit upper attached to the foam and carbo fibre insole; a deadly combination by all accounts. Opening the box was like being a child again at Christmas Day with the one present you asked for in front of you. For me it would have been my Stretch Armstrong when I was nearly 10 years old, around 1976, man I loved Stretch Armstrong. My brother got Godzilla I think, basically the same idea; you stretch the sh*t out of the toy and it always returns to its original shape. To a 10 year old this was life changing, the flyknits have the same effect on a 51 year old. Personally that’s the $350 purchase price covered right there, the fact they also make me run faster for less effort is a bonus. Of course the only fly in the ointment is the possibility of me now searching on eBay for an original Stretch Armstrong and paying thousands of dollars to replicate that feeling I got as a 10 year old again. That would be difficult to get past no1 Wife for sure, even harder than the shoes!
So last few words… to me the Bugatti Veyron of running shoes, probably the most expensive shoe on the market but , like the Bugatti, the best of the best. Of course there will be haters who dish this post but that’s fine because I have enough experience to know a game changer when I encounter it, either as a 10 year old with the latest toy or a 51 year old with the best running show every invented, bar none. Really I should just keep quiet and let my competitors stumble around in their run of the mill trainers but that’s not me. We all run and race but really it’s ourselves we are racing against and our PB’s (PR’s) define us ; these shoes can help you rediscover yourself and to me that is a good thing and if even one person reads this post and goes out and buys (finds?) a pair I would have succeeded in giving that runner the same feeling I got when I opened my Stretch Armstrong box over 40 years ago, and that really is priceless.
