Potter has us all under spell of magic shoes
When I was a boy – admittedly back in the mists of barely recorded time – I was fixated by a strip cartoon in Roy of the Rovers comic. Billy’s Boots was about a young lad just like me, pretty useless at football, who finds an old pair of dilapidated, motheaten boots in a bin, which turn out to have once belonged to the forgotten legend Dead-shot Keen. And when Billy Dane tries on the boots he discovers that, instead of tripping over his own shadow, he can suddenly play like the former owner: they turn him into a star.
In those days, the idea that footwear could convert any stumbling amateur into a champion was the fondest childhood fantasy. Not any more. Over the weekend, a runner called Beth Potter set a British record for the 5,000 metres. Actually, she smashed the existing mark. Running in a mixed race in Barrowford in Lancashire, she took 10 seconds off Paula Radcliffe’s previous record of 14 min 51 sec, which had stood for more than a decade.
And here is the thing about Potter: while not remotely the Billy Dane-style incompetent ingenue (after all she competed for Great Britain in the 10,000m at the Rio Olympics) she had never before come close to troubling the compilers of the record books. Indeed, these days she prefers to pursue the triathlon rather than solely head around a track. Now here she is in possession of the second fastest road 5k ever.
But what will have pricked the
Suddenly even the most hapless jogger has become embroiled in the shoemakers’ arms race
imagination of those of us who toil round the park in the pathetic belief that we might one day line up at the start of an Olympic race is less her athleticism than what she was wearing. She donned a pair of Asics Metaspeed Sky, a new style of running shoe that, thanks to midsole foam and a carbon plate, promises not so much to put a spring in your step as apply rocket fuel to your stride.
And Potter is not the only one emerging from the ranks to post extraordinary times.
In the British Olympic marathon trials last month, Chris Thompson finished first at the age of 39. It was perhaps no coincidence that he had been given permission by his shoe sponsors to wear a pair of Nike Vaporfly, another variety of the new style of supershoe.
As marketing exercises go, this could not have panned out better. Sure, at £225 these are not cheap additions to the running wardrobe. But already thousands of us will have put in an order for a pair of shoes like Potter’s. And when parkrun begins again after Covid-19 restrictions are lifted on June 5, the first thing everyone will be doing on the start line is checking out each other’s shoes. Fetching up in an old pair of Dunlop Green Flash is no longer in order. Everyone is grabbing themselves a pair of carbon-fibre plates. Suddenly even the most hapless jogger has become embroiled in the shoe manufacturers’ arms race – or rather foot race.
The sad thing is that, like golfers forking out for the latest brand of driver in the assumption it will help them dispatch the ball further, we are all so easily intoxicated by the idea that we can buy a piece of kit which will offer an immediate and effective boost.
Because, never mind what they might tell you about the standalone joys of exercise, anyone who jogs these days is obsessed by their time. Watch the start of any mass participation race, and every runner is setting their watches or the app on their phone, ready to record their performance. We have all become stat nerds, fretting over cadence, obsessing about stride pattern.
Time is the one sure measure of improvement. Anything that promises to help us reduce the time spent actually wheezing down the road will be immediately in demand.
Indeed, in the spirit of Billy Dane and his boots, now that I am in possession of a pair of supershoes I am ready to take on the world, convinced I will see you in Tokyo. Or at least I am until I actually have to go out there and run.