My Kinesiology M.S. Thesis

A bit of a different “blog” if you can call it that. But if you are a running nerd like me and want to see my research on carbon plated running shoes, check out this link . The paper goes into MUCH more detail, arguably too much, but I conducted a study investigating the speed savings throughout the course of a 30 minute time trial in carbon plated racing shoes compared to non-plated racing shoes. There is plenty of science out there on the efficiency savings carbon plated shoes provide, but this is a first dive into quantifying what these savings translate to in the most relevant performance parameter (speed/pace) in longer distances. There are plenty of “ifs” and limitations of this study, but it is one of the first scientific based estimates. If you don’t want to read the actual paper, I’ll give you the answer here! We found an average of 5.5 seconds/mile improvement in the carbon plated flats compared to a non-plated flat during a 30 minute run to exhaustion test (think 10k-ish). There was a ton of variability in the speed improvements throughout our 8 participants however. The maximum savings were around 11 s/mile and the minimum savings were -2s/mile (non-plated shoes were faster). The reasons behind this variability are largely speculatory still, but I would guess that it has to do with footstrike, speed, and tendon stiffness. If you’re a shoe nerd like me, enjoy the paper, if not, thanks for reading this extremely brief synopsis!