nike training air visi fly shop online | Future of Fast: Behind the Evolution of Nike's Vaporfly NEXT%

Eliud Kipchoge didn’t look surprised.

The world marathon record holder waved his finger in the air in celebration during the final 200 meters of the 2019 London Marathon. He saluted the crowd lining the runway—first on his right, then his left—as Buckingham Palace shrank into the background.

Kipchoge looked relaxed in the home stretch. He looked playful as he addressed the spectators cheering for him. He looked like he never expected any other outcome.

The TV broadcast cameras tracked Kipchoge on approach, always staying a step ahead of him. His feet a bright green blur on camera, tracing perfect ovals through the air like waving a burning sparkler through the night sky.

Finally, he held out his arms, embracing the unbroken tape in front of him. The timer above his head ticked to 2:02:37 as the tape snapped and dropped to the pavement.

Kipchoge slowed to a walk, smiling like a competitor does when everything goes according to plan. He paced around in his green shoes as race officials, coaches and cameras swarmed him.

Ethiopian runner Mosinet Geremew joined Kipchoge at the finish 18 seconds later. Fellow Ethiopian Mule Wasihun followed.

The three runners pressed shoulder to shoulder and posed together for photos—all wearing the same green shoes with a swooping black swoosh across the toe.

The best marathon shoes of the past were lighter and less cushioned than the everyday training shoes runners wore leading up to race day.

Big stacks of foam and rubber often make running shoes softer and more suitable for high-mileage training, but those same properties historically made shoes heavier. So, instead of plodding around marathon courses in training shoes, running companies make thinner, more responsive racing flats for the big day.

“I think the general train of thought was a racing shoe, particularly for a marathon, was just the fastest road racing shoe for 5 or 10Ks,” says Elliott Heath, a product line manager for Nike Track & Field. “Fast just meant less. Fast just meant more minimal. Fast was just as lightweight as you can go.”

Flats like the Nike Zoom Streak led to elite times, but the number of runners wearing fast, race-specific shoes was very small, Heath says. So, Nike set out to change that.

One of the biggest challenges of making Nike’s best shoe better was expectations.

Nike Footwear Designer Vianney de Montgolfier says the new Vaporfly had to be faster than the previous one, but it also had to maintain the trust runners put into the original version of the boys nike free 5 in royal blue hair products 2017.

“We started with the Vaporfly 4%, so that was a very, very big challenge for the team because it’s been such a successful shoe,” de Montgolfier says. “Our runners really loved (the 4%), so we had to be really careful with how to update the shoe because we tone so many people trust it for their races and everyday runs.”

The original Vaporfly 4% quickly dominated the world marathon circuit, propelling runners to podiums in Tokyo, Boston, London, Chicago and New York. Kipchoge wore a custom version of the shoe when he ran 2:00:25 in Nike’s attempt at breaking the two-hour marathon, and a year later he set the official world record in Berlin with a time of 2:01:39.

To be faster, the Nike NEXT% had to be lighter—or at least as light as the original—and have more cushion.

So, De Montgolfier and his team spent 18 months building shoes, listening to feedback and tweaking designs to meet the expectations of elite and everyday runners around the globe in order to create the next fastest running shoe ever: the Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next%.

You don’t get less by adding more. So, Nike created a brand new material called Vaporweave.

Nike’s design team used Vaporweave for the new shoe’s upper. The transparent, mesh-like material is made from two types of thermoplastic, TPU and TPE, that give the final product a balance of stretch and lockdown.

Vaporweave gave the shoe the light starting weight designers were looking for, but it also made it lighter throughout a race. By absorbing 93 percent less water than the knit upper on the nike running shoes orange stripes adidas women, Vaporweave doesn’t get weighed down as much by heavy rain (or heavy sweat), a problem racers like Shalane Flanagan had during the 2018 Boston Marathon downpour.

With a lighter upper in hand, Nike could afford to add more foam to the midsole where runners wanted it. Heath says they added 1 mm of stack height to the heel of the shoe and 4 mm of foam to the forefoot. All that extra foam reduced the heel-to-toe drop from 11 mm in the Vaporfly 4% to 8 mm in the NEXT%. Then they added another helping of foam to increase the width of the midsole in the forefoot for more stability in the toe off.

“Whether you’re a heel or forefoot striker, your last point of contact before you take off is always the forefoot,” Heath says. “We felt like that was going to benefit all of our runners regardless of foot strike.”

Eliud Kipchoge was making history as he cruised toward the finish line.

His 2:02:37 time set a new London Marathon record. Even though it was almost a full minute slower than his world record 2:01:39 set at the 2018 Berlin Marathon, it still counted as the second-fastest Nike Lebron Soldier 10 EP X Men White Gum Basketball Shoes Men 844378-101 ever.

The man right behind him was Mosinet Geremew. His time of 2:02:55 now stands as the third-fastest marathon time in history—only behind Kipchoge’s two races. And in third? Mule Wasihun, whose 2:03:13 makes him the seventh fastest man over 26.2 miles.

Nike’s Vaporfly NEXT% powered all three to the finish.

The Nike ZoomX Vaporfly NEXT% is available on fleetfeet.com and at select Cheap Urlfreeze Jordan Outlet locations.

By Evan Matsumoto. Evan played many sports growing up but didn’t go pro in any of them. Now, he’s the digital copywriter for fleetfeet.com and editor for the Cheap Urlfreeze Jordan Outlet blog nike sb september 2009 release form free print.