And therein lies the problem: I couldn’t feel proud of my achievement. I am not sure why I thought they wouldn’t. My previous personal bests had all been hard-won in incremental, 30-second improvements. When my results came, I was flabbergasted: 26 minutes, 18 seconds – one second off an entire minute faster than my fastest-ever. But since the new year the Burgess parkrun has attracted record-breaking numbers, with more than 800 runners jostling to get around.īottlenecks at the start and finish had slowed me down and there was little my trainers could do about that. I typically complete the 5km course in 28 minutes, give or take 30 seconds.
They felt simultaneously weightless and like mattresses had been lashed to my soles. It was as if springs were shooting out from under my feet, bouncing me along Inspector Gadget-style. But it was immediately obvious that the Vaporflys were different. That always happens with new running shoes: like getting fitted for a bra, you wonder how you ever managed to muddle on with the old ones for so long. The US runner Jacob Riley had it exactly right when he said Vaporflys felt “like trampolines” my old Adidas trainers felt like spa slippers by comparison. An athlete at the Dubai Marathon wears a pair of Nike Vaporfly.