Super shoes, school records: Causation, correlation? Both? Neither?

 With alumni weddings and a few sort of random alumni encounters over the past few weeks, the subject of the numerous school records set by our athletes (mostly in men’s track) in 2022 was front and center. Many alumni (including YOU, if you are reading this!) follow our program very closely (and we greatly appreciate THAT). Some, a bit more peripherally but still are “aware” of the general trend of the program. Alumni are generally very supportive and encouraging of the positive arc of the team. But, like in so many areas in life, they want to know WHY. Is it better athletes? Better training methods? Better meets? Better equipment? Better SHOES! Notice how, in a very subtle manner, I changed from question marks to exclamation points?! Ah, the shoes. The Super Shoes. Are they the cause of this glut of school records? Are they related? Many years ago, one wise coaching colleague explained to me the difference between correlation and causation. It is nuanced. One thing I have come to realize, as life plows on and as I get older, that the WHY question (what’s the cause, what’s the correlation) tends to be louder than it ought to be. As humans, we are constantly trying to connect dots. We are constantly trying to compare, relate and explain what is often unexplainable – life. There is far more randomness in life than we would all care to admit. A beautiful soul in her 60s, a woman who took care of herself and lived life properly, gets ravaged by cancer. Pedestrians get run over by errant cars and motorcycles. Wildfires, floods, hurricanes. There is so much calamity in the world that we cannot control or explain. We ask WHY and try to come up with answers and we grope for answers and we get frustrated when there are no answers, so we make up plausible reasons, causes for why things happen. When sometimes – most times – we should just sit back and let it all be.
 
Whoa. Rambling idiot just got off topic again, didn’t I? Back to the Super Shoes debate. The New York Times did a very interesting story after the World Athletics Championships about the arc of world records and put into question the premise that records are rapidly getting faster and falling faster. But they are talking about the best of the best, and there is even randomness there. Another tangent: It has been a decade since a Major League Baseball pitcher has thrown a perfect game. A decade ago, there was a flurry of them. Hall of Famers have thrown them. Journeymen has-been pitchers have thrown them. A bunch in a few years. Then? None for 10 years or more. Random. The Super Shoes. Have they contributed to the elevated school records? My initial reaction is to get defensive. Hey. Wait a minute. These guys are working hard and running fast! What’s the big idea! Ultimately, my “defense” is that I control what I can control: Their preparation and their effort. Or, in my inane way, I like to say? “Hey, I’m working on improving the engine, not the tires.” And that’s true! It will come to the surprise of no one reading this blog (who clearly has an inkling of what we’re about) that we (Marist Athletics) do not provide training or racing shoes for our track/XC athletes. Again, I’m not in the tire industry. That’s up to the athletes. Do many/most of them have Super Shoes? Probably. It’s gonna sound like a cop-out but … I really don’t NOTICE. The only time I get involved in the discussion is to determine whether spikes or non-spikes should be worn in distance races. Only then do the Super Shoes enter the conversation.
 
So to conclude: Have the new shoe technologies contributed to improved performance? Most likely, yes. Is that why so many school records have been set? If you say so, I’m not gonna argue with you. My response is, “don’t know, don’t care,” let’s talk about training. And as we are about to embark on a new cross country season, the Super Shoes debate is even less of a debate. Cross country TIMES are secondary to places. While we do have some XC “school records,” they are not nearly as sacrosanct as in track. Again, as we get ready to launch the rocket known as 2022-2023, I’m hoping that my alums keep pushing this debate forward, even aggressively if they want. Because, that’ll mean that our athletes have set more and more school records