TOP MARATHON SHOES

Using Strava data, The New York Times studied race results from 577,000 marathons and 496,000 half marathons between 2014 and 2019 to find the best-performing marathon shoe. Alongside the shoes, age, training volume and weather were considered. When this information was put into a statistical model, the times of those wearing Vaporfly and Next% shoes were two per cent faster than their nearest rival. The table (right) shows the estimated improvement in marathon or half-marathon time when switching to go-faster shoes.