E241 | The Evolution of Running-Shoe Technology: Breaking 2 in the Marathon—Human or Shoe?

Summary

• Breaking 2 in the marathon was, at root, a periodic reckoning in the hidden war over racing shoes: at the April 2026 London Marathon, Kenya’s 萨维 ran 1:59:30 to become the first athlete to break 2 hours in an official race, while the men’s top two and the women’s champion all wore Adidas Adios Pro Evo 3. 盖德’s verdict, however, was that “both the runner and the shoe matter”—even without breakthrough running-shoe innovation, training technology (power meters, glucose monitoring, lactate testing and liquid-nitrogen chambers) and capital’s widening of the talent pool would gradually grind down the record; “running shoes helped bring the record-breaking time forward.”
• Racing shoes have almost no durable technological moat. Midsole feedstocks come from BASF, Arkema, Evonik and other European chemical groups; “if your suppliers are not supplying exclusively to you, there is no moat between brands”—one brand can make it today and a second can follow tomorrow. The remaining differentiation is tuning the foaming process and trading off weight, performance and durability, while China is gradually closing the gap in foaming technology even as it trails on base materials.
• Only 2 events have truly ruled the running-shoe market. Adidas Ultra Boost was the first to bring supercritical materials into running shoes, but its weight made it a commuter phenomenon rather than a road-racing one; Nike’s Vaporfly fused a carbon plate with ZoomX superfoam and took over marathon racing—95 of the top 100 at the 2018 Valencia Marathon wore it. Most other “era-defining” shoes were largely brand marketing.
• Nike missed Breaking 2 through a chain of failures in timing, talent and execution. The death of genius runner 基普图姆 in a car crash, an overcorrected DTC strategy and a reorganization from sports categories to men/women/kids shifted R&D from athlete-led to business-led; Vaporfly and Alphafly then lived off their old gains, with no new shoe for nearly 2 years after Alphafly 3. “Nike’s foundation is still there,” and it will not be displaced by Adidas overnight—especially since Evo 3 is limited edition and Adidas still carries the industry’s “world-class midsole, neighborhood-grade upper” jibe.
• The fiercest competition is in racing, but the most profitable market is mass-market running. Racing results provide professional validation and a sub-two event brings its own traffic, while volume is driven by fashion: the simplified version of Evo 3, Adizero Evo SL, sold 10M pairs in a year (1M pairs is generally considered a success, versus 10M-12M a year for Air Force 1), on the strength of “design” and a counterintuitively large logo. New Balance reached $9.6B in 2025 and grew 1.8x over 5 years by taking the shelf space Nike ceded through its strategic retreat from distributors and riding the shift from retro basketball shoes to retro running-shoe makeovers.
• The long-term racing-shoe landscape will probably narrow to Nike and Adidas. Brooks and Saucony generate less than one-tenth the revenue of either giant and cannot support top-athlete contracts plus years of R&D; the Big Four daily-running brands are being forced into racing simply to defend their core. Athlete signing is a parallel arms race: brands must establish relationships before a runner has results, because signing after a breakthrough is both expensive and difficult.
• The industry is entering a bottleneck, and brands have already voted with their feet. Domestic marathon events are being canceled and growth is slowing; materials such as TPEE offer only “minor tweaks,” so brands are turning to trail running and Hyrox (pronounced “Hi Rocks”). 盖德 sees technology rising in a spiral and says we may “look forward to the next Boost moment”—a genuine breakthrough could emerge in the next few years—while Chinese brands’ opening is to follow the auto industry’s overseas playbook and compete on value.

Deep dive

1. The Breaking-2 Moment: London Marathon Rewrites 130 Years of History, Adidas Owns the Spotlight

• At the London Marathon on April 26, 2026, Kenyan runner 萨维 won in 1:59:30, becoming the first athlete in history to break 2 hours in an official marathon; runner-up 克莱恰 also went sub-2. Both men’s podium finishers and women’s champion 阿塞法 wore Adidas Adios Pro Evo 3.
• Before then, Nike had long dominated marathon racing: when Vaporfly debuted in 2016, its on-foot rate was so high that a group of athletic-shoe companies went to the international governing body, calling it “technological doping” and demanding rules to limit it. Host 麻花 framed the episode’s central question: behind the visible running-shoe war, what are the athletic-shoe companies actually competing over?
• Guest 盖德 entered the industry in 2006 and worked as a product manager at Nike and Adidas before moving to Kappa and Saucony. After joining Saucony in 2019, he began running regularly, covering 100-200 km a month—“If you want to understand running shoes deeply, you really need to run in them yourself.”

2. “Era-Defining Running Shoes” Are Mostly Marketing; Only 2 Events Truly Dominated

• Running-shoe history has plenty of classic milestones: the 60s brought New Balance Trackster’s wave pattern; the 70s brought Brooks Vantage’s first mass-produced EVA; then came Nike’s waffle sole and Air cushioning, ASICS GEL, Nike Free, Ultra Boost and Vaporfly 4%. 盖德 brought the hype down: information channels were limited back then, and “the so-called era-defining shoes of earlier periods were more often the brands’ own marketing.”
• He recognizes only 2 truly dominant events. First, Adidas Ultra Boost was the first to bring supercritical material into running shoes—but it did not dominate the jogging market; its “sinking-into-mud” feel quickly conquered commuting, and even Yeezy adopted Boost technology. Second, Nike genuinely fused a carbon plate and superfoam into marathon racing shoes, giving Vaporfly and Alphafly “dominant on-foot rates” from 2019 to 2021.
• Technologically, this was an upgrade along 2 tracks: base materials moved from EVA to more advanced TPU and TPEE, while processing advanced from chemical foaming to supercritical foaming—adding inert gases such as nitrogen to the material and combining them into “a supercritical state between solid and liquid.” Ultra Boost had excellent rebound and cushioning, but its weight made it a commuting winner and a road-racing loser.

3. The Carbon Plate Is Not the Secret; the Carbon Plate Plus Superfoam Is—and the Midsole Is the Decisive Battleground

• Carbon plates are hardly new: Brooks used them in running shoes as early as the 80s, while Air Jordan 11 and Foamposite also used large full-length carbon plates. Vaporfly’s breakthrough was pairing a carbon plate with ZoomX superfoam: the foam is exceptionally light and, because of its high expansion ratio, especially soft and springy; the plate keeps it from bottoming out and converts that spring into maximum forward propulsion.
• Earlier marathon racers had ultra-thin soles—athletes wanted to save weight, but an amateur runner wearing one for a marathon could have feet that were “finished” by the end. Carbon plate plus superfoam made the midsole both cushioned and light, allowing recreational runners to wear professional racing shoes for the first time and driving mass adoption.
• 盖德’s explanation of why the midsole matters is worth preserving in full: the difference between running and every other sport is “one motion repeated without end.” A 42.195-km race means more than 40,000 steps; the same motion is repeated more than 40,000 times, and the impact keeps accumulating in the joints, muscles and midsole. Basketball, soccer and tennis constantly change the footwork; running does not. So the midsole cannot merely perform well at the start—it must “maintain relatively strong performance throughout the full 42.195 kilometers.”
• On Vaporfly’s claim of a 4% improvement in running economy, 盖德 acknowledged that the figure came from ideal laboratory conditions; actual effects vary widely with running form, body weight and cadence. When 麻花 compared it to an instant-noodle commercial, 盖德 accepted the analogy: “Exactly—we call it ‘a thousand runners, a thousand feet’（千人千脚）.”

4. Beyond the Midsole: Upper, Last and Heel-to-Toe Drop

• Uppers evolved from leather, which was heavy and poorly ventilated, to engineered mesh. Racing shoes use high-strength, lightweight materials for weight savings and lockdown, but “the comfort is not quite as good.” 盖德 also acknowledged that upper technology is not as important as the midsole; many daily trainers still use traditional materials.
• The last is an underestimated part of the equation. The Big Four daily-running brands—Brooks, Saucony, New Balance and ASICS—perform well because “their lasts are exceptionally comfortable”: they hold the foot without squeezing it and offer multiple width options, something still relatively uncommon among Chinese brands.
• Heel-to-toe drop—the height difference between the heel and forefoot—is a frequent online argument. Some say zero drop best matches a natural gait; others prefer a drop above 1 cm for stronger heel cushioning. 盖德 offered no verdict: “There is no settled answer.” Choose according to the way you habitually run.

5. R&D: From the Innovation Kitchen to More Than 20 Iterations

• Nike’s Oregon headquarters has a top-secret Innovation Kitchen that visitors are forbidden to enter; Vaporfly was said to have taken more than 4 years to develop. Saucony’s first carbon-plated racer, 飞鹏, went through more than 20 iterations before reaching final mass production. Xtep has a running laboratory occupying more than 3,000 square meters, equipped with infrared sensors and slow-motion gait filming.
• Demand for racing shoes may come more from athletes than from the mass market: elite performances have an enormous effect on product credibility, and brands “make their greatest effort to help athletes achieve better results.”
• The reality for small brands is harsher: in an 18-month launch cycle, only 3-6 months may genuinely be available for R&D; the rest goes to ordering and production.

6. The Supply-Chain Undercurrent: European Chemical Giants Supply the Feedstock, China Catches Up on Foaming

• Midsole feedstock is supplied mainly by European chemical groups. Ultra Boost came from an Adidas collaboration with Germany’s BASF; 盖德 attributed ZoomX to France’s Arkema, with Evonik also in the mix. Many Chinese brands source their feedstock from the same suppliers. Wanhua is catching up, but Europe remains ahead.
• China’s opening is foaming technology: using the same BASF or Arkema feedstock, Chinese foaming technology can produce a better-performing molded midsole. Jinjiang Guosheng’s collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Ningbo Institute of Materials has supplied midsole material to Saucony, Li-Ning and 毕迈, with 大牦牛, known for strong foaming technology, emerging in recent years.

7. The Rise and Fall of Barefoot Shoes: Salad Versus Fast Food

• From 2005 to 2015, Nike Free and Vibram FiveFingers were widely promoted. Why did they fade? 盖德’s most vivid analogy was that thick-soled shoes are McDonald’s and KFC—the first bite tastes great—while barefoot shoes are a light salad: unpleasant at first, but beneficial over the long term. They train the small intrinsic foot muscles and restore the foot’s original function. The problem is poor underfoot feel: consumers cannot stick with them, and without consistency there is no effect.
• Around 2012, Vibram faced a lawsuit and paid damages over alleged false advertising. 盖德’s view was that the company had advertised laboratory data, while the training effect naturally varies from person to person.
• 盖德 interviewed legendary runner 格布雷希拉西耶, who is unequivocally against barefoot running for modern runners. He grew up running on dirt roads and grass with built-in cushioning; today’s surfaces are concrete and asphalt, so “you get injured before the training effect arrives.” The transition to a thin sole must be gradual: “If you go from rich food to salad overnight, you may become malnourished after just a few days.”

8. Breaking 2: Human or Shoe? The Technology Is Concentrated Where Cameras Cannot See

• 盖德’s answer was that both matter, though the contribution is difficult to quantify. He shifted the focus beyond the racecourse: 萨维’s 2 publicly known training priorities include extending 基普乔格’s 7-day training cycle to 10 days, with more varied work and fuller recovery, and adding more running-specific strength training. “The real secret may be known only by his coach.”
• The list of supporting technology is dense: a power meter on the shoe to stabilize intensity; a real-time glucose monitor on the arm to time fueling; blood-draw lactate testing already used by cyclists; sour cherry juice, beetroot juice, curcumin and even “borderline peptides” in supplements; liquid-nitrogen chambers, compression leg sleeves, HRV monitoring and temperature-controlled mattresses. “The running shoe is merely the tool ultimately visible on the course. More high technology is being applied to athletes in places you cannot see.”
• Attention brings capital, and capital broadens the talent pool. 萨维 “almost became a teacher”; an uncle thought running offered a better future and pulled him back to the track. When 麻花 pressed the point, the key judgment was confirmed: even without breakthrough running-shoe innovation, humanity could eventually break 2; “running shoes helped move the record-breaking time forward.” 盖德 agreed that it was the combined effect of technological progress across the board.

9. Dissecting Adios Pro Evo 3: Sub-100-Gram Shoe, Carbon Ring and a Grudge Against Carbon Plates

• Evo 3 is billed as the world’s first professional running shoe with a per-shoe weight below 100 grams; the leading road racers before it weighed 180-220 grams per shoe. It uses TPEE foam as an answer to Nike’s superfoam and replaces the carbon plate with a carbon ring. A carbon plate is a single curved slab through the center of the midsole that generates propulsion by bending; the carbon ring runs around the outer perimeter, leaving the core to deform and rebound through the superfoam itself.
• 盖德 corrected the claim: “Calling it the first is a little exaggerated—perhaps it was the first mass-produced one.” Li-Ning, Qiaodan and 361° had all made sub-100-gram concept shoes, but yields were low and costs high; they also lacked top-athlete endorsement at the time—Li-Ning had not yet signed 大破杰—so none reached mass production. TPEE is not a revolutionary innovation, but more like an adjustment and upgrade of EVA. The key is making the shoe light and soft while still allowing an elite athlete to complete a full marathon without performance fading.
• Why did Adidas refuse to use a carbon plate? The industry’s oral history goes back to 2012-13, when Nike launched Flyknit and Adidas launched Primeknit at almost the same time; the 2 companies went to court over the technology. Once bitten, twice shy: Adidas first used carbon rods shaped around 5 toes, Energy Rods, and now uses a carbon ring. “If you have a technology, I’ll deliberately refuse to use it. No matter how good it is, I won’t use it.”
• The same feedstock can produce very different results because foaming is where the skill lies. 盖德’s lobster analogy: “Take the same lobster and have a roadside stall cook it, or have a top Michelin chef cook it—the raw material is the same, but the taste and selling price are worlds apart.” He also acknowledged that Evo 3 happened to be on the feet of sponsored athletes when they broke 2; “there is some element of chance.”

10. Why Nike Missed Breaking 2: Fallen Genius, Strategic Errors and Living Off Legacy

• Nike had a real chance: its contracted genius runner 基普图姆 came very close to breaking 2, but after producing several outstanding performances, he died in a car crash. “The odds of discovering a genius athlete are extremely low,” and Nike could not find a replacement in the short term.
• At the company level, a business downturn and a CEO change would inevitably affect the innovation team’s staffing and morale. The result was that Vaporfly and Alphafly went “several years without a major innovation—in blunt terms, they were living off their legacy.” Nearly 2 years after Alphafly 3 launched, the next generation still has not appeared.
• The organizational damage was also significant. Nike’s previous CEO changed the product organization from running, basketball and training categories to men, women and kids. The former was athlete-led and the latter was business-led—“How can I sell more goods?” The difference in innovation planning was substantial. Nike is now correcting course, rebuilding its daily-running matrix as 3 lines—the 飞马, 麦柔 and 稳乘—each with 3 tiers; but its once-dominant racing line has slowed.

11. Racing Wins on the Course, Money Is Made on the Shelf: Endorsement, Traffic and Consumers Who Won’t Be Talked Out of It

• Racing results definitely have a positive effect on daily-running-shoe sales: professional credibility reassures ordinary consumers, while a sub-two event brings its own traffic and potential to break out beyond the core audience. “You no longer need to spend money buying traffic or finding influencers to promote it.” In 2018, among the top 100 at the Valencia Marathon, 95 wore Vaporfly; over the past 3 years, Adios Pro’s share of men’s podium spots at the 6 majors rose from 2022’s 15% to 2025’s 35%.
• Consumer psychology is the other half of the story. Many people “just want to buy the most expensive shoe from your brand.” Running influencers may painstakingly warn beginners not to wear racing shoes because of the injury risk, “but you simply cannot talk them out of it”—they want the look and the psychological cue that putting on the shoe will make running easier. Elite athletes buy shoes regardless of cost, and fans pass the choice through their communities.
• Adidas’s weakness is that the Pro Evo line is limited edition. Limited supply may reflect low yields and high costs, but Adidas also wants the shoe to pull through its retail takedown versions—Adios Pro 3/4 and the upcoming Pro 5. Many consumers cannot buy one, or will not pay more than $500 for a “one-and-done” marathon shoe. The yield logic is straightforward: the more extreme the foam expansion ratio, the higher the chance of an uneven midsole being scrapped. “The more extreme the pursuit of performance, the lower the production yield may be.”

12. Signing Athletes Is Another Arms Race: Track Runners Are Switching to the Marathon Earlier

• The runner-up at the London Marathon broke the record on his first full marathon; he came from the track. The old pattern was for 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter runners to switch to the half and full marathon once they aged and lost their edge on the track. Now marathon popularity exceeds that of track events, so young runners with strong track results are switching events earlier.
• Nike’s declining signing power is also a business problem: budgets have been cut and its offers cannot exceed competitors’. Sports-marketing teams rely on years of relationships with coaches, sports schools and training camps to identify prospects; an unstable team loses those prospects to rivals.
• 盖德 put the timing window plainly: to produce a breakout effect, a brand “has to establish contact with the athlete before the athlete has achieved results.” Once the runner is famous, the price is high and the athlete is unlikely to leave the brand that signed them first.

13. The Racing Market Contracts to a Two-Horse Race; the Big Four Daily Trainers Are Forced Into Battle

• Why are Nike and Adidas the only visible competitors left? The entry threshold is long-cycle R&D plus contracts with elite athletes—“only they can do it.” Brooks and Saucony are small compared with Nike and Adidas; their revenue may be less than one-tenth of either giant. 盖德’s long-term view is that the market will “most likely” remain a two-horse race.
• The Big Four are really the Big Four daily-running-shoe brands, not the Big Four running-shoe brands. But racing shoes attract too much attention, and daily runners are buying them too, “forcing these daily-running brands to make racing shoes as well, or their core market will gradually be taken away.” ASICS once dominated China’s daily-running market because Brooks and Saucony had not entered China and New Balance was focused on casual fashion—there was no competition.
• Hoka and On are not competing on the same dimension. On prices high and discounts sparingly, making it poor value for serious runners who wear shoes out; “it is more a symbol of identity.” Hoka has strong trail-running dominance. Its 3 technologies—rolling geometry, an embedded footbed and thick-stack cushioning—do not have especially strong moats, but its ability to tune traditional EVA, often criticized as a cash grab, into exceptional comfort has created loyalists who struggle to feel comfortable in other shoes. On’s robotic-arm spray-printed upper is innovative, but its on-foot rate is low and it remains more of a conceptual showcase.

14. An Adidas Era? Limited Editions and a “Neighborhood-Grade Upper”; Nike’s Base Remains

• Will the market enter the “Adidas era” described in the media? 盖德 said it would be difficult for 2 reasons: Evo 3 is still a limited release, and Adidas has not solved its upper problem. The industry’s cutting remark is “a world-class midsole, a neighborhood-grade upper.” Many runners wear Adios Pro through a marathon until both feet are rubbed raw; by the finish, their racing shoes are stained with blood.
• On the other side, “Nike still has a very large base of die-hard fans.” Many running bloggers wear Nike in races whenever they are not tied to a brand. “The base is still there. It is slowly eroding, but Adidas replacing it overnight is simply not going to happen.”

15. The Evo SL Lesson: Design Beat Performance, and the Big Logo Defeated Old Orthodoxy

• The mass-market version of Evo 3, Adizero Evo SL, sold 10M pairs in its first year—comparable to Nike’s evergreen Air Force 1 at 10M-12M pairs a year, while “anything above 1M pairs is generally already considered a major success.” 盖德’s explanation came down to one word: “design.”
• His candid admission is worth preserving. The shoe was essentially a simplified version of Pro Evo 2, a specialist speed-training shoe “very unsuitable for jogging and commuting.” Adidas instead marketed “racing aesthetics” and used fashion influencers to style it. “I was not particularly convinced by that promotion at the time, but the facts proved that I had misjudged it.” Large numbers of people with no obvious running habit now wear it for shopping and hiking. “Only an effect this broad can produce 10M pairs in sales; good running performance alone could never do it.”
• The industry overturned an old rule: “The logo cannot be too large; the larger the logo, the lower the sales.” Evo SL’s clean upper and prominent 3 stripes extending from the upper onto the sole became a distribution advantage in an age of image-led discovery and short video.

16. New Balance Charges Toward $10B: Taking Nike’s Abandoned Shelf Space and Catching the Retro Running-Shoe Wave

• New Balance generated $9.6B in sales in 2025 and will very likely break $10B this year, becoming the fourth sports brand after Nike, Adidas and Lululemon to reach that level. Its scale has grown 1.8x over the past 5 years. Publicly listed peer ASICS has also grown rapidly, but the fastest growth is in its fashion and casual line—it has even just spun off Onitsuka Tiger.
• The trend has shifted. Retro casual shoes used to be rebuilt from old basketball shoes; in recent years, they have increasingly been rebuilt from running shoes. Students in schools have gone from wearing basketball shoes almost universally to wearing running shoes in the majority of cases, with many children commuting in carbon-plated racing shoes.
• The key shift was Nike’s previous CEO strategically abandoning the distributor channel in a US market dominated by multi-brand retailers. As Nike pulled back, wall space opened up: “I filled it with New Balance, Hoka and On. Nike effectively handed them the North American market.” 麻花’s summary was confirmed: the fiercest competition is in racing shoes, while the most profitable market is mass-market running. But mass-market fashion still needs the racing side to establish a foothold, and New Balance’s retro collaborations were cultivated over years; without that groundwork, they could not have been created overnight.

17. The Domestic Brands’ Gap and the Overseas Route; the Next Boost Moment in a Bottleneck

• The technical gap between Chinese domestic and international brands “objectively exists but is steadily narrowing.” For now, “it is difficult to produce a category-leading innovation; the industry is still mainly learning from foreign brands.” Structural weaknesses include short R&D cycles, a focus on short-term returns—projects are abandoned if they do not work within 1-2 years—high employee turnover, and designers who entered the field mid-career and “do not have a particularly high rate of running themselves.” If designers have strong opinions but do not run and do not communicate with runners, problems follow. China has more brands, making job-hopping easier; in the US, there are few running-shoe employers beyond Nike, while in Germany the main options are Adidas and Puma, so teams are naturally more stable. Nike’s former CEO Mark Parker came from running-shoe design.
• The market cycle is also changing. Explosive marathon growth was unique to China; domestic races are now being canceled and growth is slowing, and “running is gradually reaching a bottleneck.” Brands saw the trend when placing orders 6 months ahead, so they are adding capacity in trail running and the new sport Hyrox (pronounced “Hi Rocks”), for which Adidas has already made a dedicated shoe. “No wonder so many brands are pushing into trail running—they have already seen that running shoes have peaked.”
• Technologically, the past few years have brought mostly minor tweaks, but 盖德 left room for optimism: technological progress rises in a spiral, and “we can look forward to the next Boost moment or Vaporfly moment, perhaps sometime in the next few years.” The route for domestic brands is to follow the auto industry’s overseas playbook. Supply-chain and value advantages are real; Anta is building running communities in the US and attending running-shoe trade shows, and “taking running shoes overseas should certainly be easier than taking cars overseas.”
• The honor of Breaking 2 belongs not only to Adidas and 萨维. The late 基普图姆, retired 基普乔格, the earlier 格布雷希拉西耶 and elite runners whose names we cannot recall all “laid the road to today’s Breaking-2 achievement one step at a time.” Everyone who participates in and follows the marathon contributes commercial value, creating the capital needed to discover better athletes and build more extreme equipment.