When the most decorated 100-meter sprinter ever stepped to the line for a final time, she told herself what she knew: That she was prepared, powerful, and this race was hers — for her. The next handful of seconds were to honor everything that had brought her to this moment.Green, yellow, and black hair whipping behind her — a self-proclaimed “daughter of the soil,” who chose to wear the colors of her nation’s flag for her final finish —&nbsp;gold-hued nails splayed in front of her, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-celebrates-shelly-ann-fraser-pryce" target="_blank">Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce</a> exploded off the blocks in the World Athletics Championship final in a capacity-filled Japan National Stadium in Tokyo. She ended her 100-meter career in the same way she began racing 18 years ago in Japan — with fierce speed, strength, and composure. It was a bold tribute to Jamaica, the nation whose unyielding support has carried her through two decades at the top of the sport.In her decades of dominance — from becoming the first Caribbean woman to win Olympic gold in the 100-meters in 2008, to returning as World Champion in 2019 after giving birth to her son, Zyon — Shelly-Ann has embodied the power of duality.&nbsp;The ability to have longevity in track and field’s shortest, most intense discipline; exuding femininity and self-expression in a physically demanding sport; proving motherhood and greatness can coexist.What athletes everywhere, and especially young girls, can take from Shelly-Ann’s lead: The courage to run your own race, on your terms. To trust that setbacks don’t define you, only your response to them. And the assurance that, if you believe in yourself and work with discipline, harmony is possible. Dreams and family, career and legacy.For that, and the now 276 incredible races and finish line moments, thank you, Shelly-Ann.Below, go behind the scenes of the G.O.A.T.’s final meet days in Tokyo.

The shoes. The hair. The finish. At the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Shelly-Ann, a five-time world champion, ended her career her way.

Sofieke van Bilsen is a 29-year-old Dutch photographer with a passion for storytelling through imagery. She is in-house photographer to the German women's national football team, and was team photographer for the German Olympic Team in Paris 2024. She works closely with Nike athletes such as Faith Kipyegon, Eliud Kipchoge and Sifan Hassan.In her photography, she aims to create compelling visual narratives, focusing on the deep connection between emotion and athleticism. She strives to capture the raw moments behind the scenes, the untold stories of the journey,and everything in between, bringing the spirit of sports to life.Sofieke's personality creates instant connections with people, and she is loved by the athletes she works with. Her relaxed and enthusiastic personality complements an incredible skill level and ability to work in high pressure environments for athletes.

Sofieke van Bilsen

Nike Running

Photo Essay

Icon Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce Ran Her Final 100 Meter On Her Terms

Over the course of his career, LeBron James has shared his passion for the game globally, partnering with Nike to travel throughout Greater China during his offseason, galvanizing a nation in its love for basketball and hoops culture. Just as LeBron’s career has evolved through different eras, his tours have represented different values over the many times he's visited since 2005. Below are some of his most memorable moments in the country.

2005-2009

LeBron began his debut tour in Beijing in August of 2005. He was invited to watch the awards ceremony of the Nike Battlegrounds tournament, but he’d depart as more than just a spectator. From the moment he stepped down in China, he believed his tour could become a cross-cultural exchange rooted in a shared love of hoops and a mission to inspire the next generation of young players in China. “Basketball is not only a sport, it's also a bridge that connects people," he said.&nbsp;“This is a great learning experience for everyone. I hope I can continue to help grow the game globally and inspire the youth in China to reach their dreams."

LeBron's legacy in China is woven into special China-specific iterations of his signature footwear. In 2007, LeBron James appeared alongside NIKE, Inc.'s then-President &amp; CEO Mark Parker to debut his Nike Zoom LeBron V "China" colorway.

LeBron returned to Beijing in 2009 after his MVP season where he enjoyed a hero's welcome. As part of his trip, he donated equipment and provided scholarships for the Zhenhua School, a school for the children of migrant workers in suburban Beijing.

To celebrate his season, LeBron was presented with an exclusive pair of the Nike Air Max LeBron VII, featuring a Shenyang-inspired design dubbed “Loyalty” created by the local artist Ray Lei, and a Shanghai-inspired design dubbed “Family,” created by the local artist Sic.

2011-2015

LeBron embraced his role as a global ambassador for the game, focusing on the opportunity to inspire China’s young players. In 2011, his tour expanded to eight days over four cities, promoting grassroots basketball through a series of skill clinics and tournaments.

In 2012, with a fresh gold medal to pair with his championship ring, LeBron James made a triumphant arrival in Beijing to kick off a four-day tour as part of the&nbsp;Find Your Greatness campaign. "Greatness is defined by how much you want to put into what you do," said LeBron. "Greatness comes with victory. It also comes with being able to come back from adversity."

In 2013, LeBron returned to China with plenty to celebrate: his second straight NBA championship and MVP awards for both the regular season and the Finals.

In 2014, LeBron James was the first mentor to announce the roster for the Nike RISE, designed to help players raise their competitive game and improve their skill.

In 2015, Nike RISE 2015 evolved with LED Courts and motion-tracking drills to create a pinnacle training experience, teach the fundamentals of basketball and push the boundaries of sports training.

An emotional finale saw four players chosen to represent China at the World Streetball Championships.

2016-2019

After winning another NBA title in 2016, LeBron entered Guangzhou to a massive championship parade, the streets flanked by tens of thousands of fans, many of them in Cavs #23 jerseys. It was a signal for just how widely James’ legacy had expanded throughout Asia.&nbsp;His More Than an Athlete campaign inspired young players to see basketball as one of many tools for affecting social change.

After a warm welcome from thousands of fans, he spent most of his time in Beijing working out with and coaching members of the Chinese Junior National basketball team.

Visiting primary schools throughout Beijing, LeBron shared his personal basketball experiences with young athletes, emphasizing the role that hard work, dedication and self-belief played in his path to success.

In 2018, the first day of his "More Than an Athlete" tour in Shanghai began with a panel discussion with students at the Shanghai Theatre&nbsp;Academy, and ended with a park shootaround. Hundreds of fans gathered outside the court to watch him play, hoping to catch a glimpse of the icon.

This month, LeBron flew to China for his "Forever King" tour, his 15th in the country and marking the 20th anniversary of tours in Asia. There, he joined some of the world’s most passionate hoopers and basketball fans, reiterating his commitment to giving back to the game across the world.

Over the course of his career, LeBron James has shared his passion for the game globally, partnering with Nike to travel throughout Greater China during his offseason, galvanizing a nation in its love for basketball and hoops culture.

Nike Basketball

Journey of an Icon: 20 Years of LeBron James in China

Hours of powering up steep ascents and navigating gnarly descents. Whipping mountain winds, glaring direct sun and biting evening temps. Getting mentally right with the fact that the next aid station is far, far away. Ultra trail running can sound like a grueling, relentless sport reserved for the wildest, most hardcore athletes among us.According to our <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-acg-all-conditions-racing-department" target="_blank">All Conditions Racing Department</a> runners — six of whom just conquered pinnacle UTMB races across the French, Italian and Swiss Alps, on trails spanning 15 to 174 kilometers, with elevation gains of 1,200 to nearly 10,000 meters — the grit, determination, joy and freedom trail running gives you is worth every ounce of work. See for yourself.

<h3>ROSS GOLLAN</h3>Race: ETC; 15km with 1,200m elevation gain Global finish rank: 29th

<h3>MARIE NIVET</h3>Race: Experience Trail Courmayeur (ETC); 15km with 1,200m elevation gain Global women’s finish rank: 7th

CESARE MAESTRIRace: ETC; 15km with 1,200m elevation gain Global finish rank: 2nd

<h3>BAPTISTE COATANTIEC</h3>Race: Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB); 174km with nearly 10,000m elevation gain Global finish rank: 11th

<h3>ANTHONY COSTALES</h3>Race: Courmayeur – Champex – Chamonix (CCC); 101km with more than 6,050m elevation gain Global finish rank: 15th

<h3>DREW HOLMEN</h3>Race: CCC; 101km with more than 6,050m elevation gain Global finish rank: 3rd

Powering up steep ascents. Navigating gnarly descents. Whipping mountain winds. Ultra trail running is a relentless sport. But the payoff is well worth the grind.

Ultra Trail Running Can Take Everything You’ve Got — and Give You Even More

NExt volume

Emily Abbate is a Brooklyn-based, veteran journalist on a mission to empower women to live healthier, happier and more-motivated lives. Now a 15-time marathoner, the certified wellness coach and former fitness editor at SELF is the brains behind <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/bit.ly/hurdlepodcast__;!!KLCbKzk!koJf4niKivkRTNFXiKFGc-Rp9X7CYwLRzeMh0OM15o--0KLEXrR41gHvdUO5ts-iOJJwalmx8rzIkSs$" target="_blank">Hurdle</a>, a podcast acclaimed by The New York Times as “addictive,” with over 10 million downloads with listeners in more than 120 countries. You can find her most recent bylines in Marie Claire, Runher, and Women’s Health. Plus: Learn more about her in <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/introducing-the-after-dark-tour-series-embracing/id1692035962?i=1000775769561" target="_blank">her interview</a> kicking off the After Dark Tour on Coach Bennett’s podcast.

Emily Abbate

The 800-meter race is the ultimate collision in track and field: a brutal, oxygen-deprived effort where the power of a sprinter smashes directly into the relentless engine of a distance runner.&nbsp;You don’t just run an 800. You survive it.Among the best to ever dance at this ragged edge of human endurance is the reigning Olympic champion <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/keely-hodgkinson-nike-interview" target="_blank">Keely Hodgkinson</a>, whose unapologetic personality, fierce competitiveness and elegant style have made her an unmistakable icon of the sport.For the latest step in her unyielding pursuit of every fractional advantage against the clock, Hodgkinson has worked alongside the Nike Innovation team to create a one-of-one system of speed she’ll unveil in front of a home crowd in London.Built to Hodgkinson’s exact performance and design specifications, her custom suit is meticulously engineered to help her push the limits of contemporary track and field — marking the latest chapter in Nike’s history of supporting athletes with custom performance innovations.

The Anatomy of a Uniform

Most athletes step onto the track dripping in color and pattern. But when Hodgkinson takes the starting line in London, she’ll be wearing stark, uninterrupted black.

“Keely has an immense amount of personal confidence when she wears black,” says Hannah Amis, Director, Innovation Apparel Product Design. “It’s sleek, it’s brave, and it allowed us to celebrate her vibrant personality through color-shifting, 3D-printed vortex generators instead.”The suit’s striking silhouette is a product of 4D design methodology, a system that charts apparel patterning through a body moving across time and space rather than across a flat plane or static 3D form.&nbsp;“Our team studied every detail of how Keely moves through space, ensuring the suit works with her stride, her mechanics and her race demands, creating a distraction-free fit that allows her to focus solely on performance,” says Amis.The pattern itself is designed to accommodate Hodgkinson’s maximum stride length without creasing or bunching, a consequence of less-than-perfect fit that could slow her down. To complement this handcrafted second skin, the back also features a massive, dramatic cut-out.&nbsp;“The large opening at the back has been a favorite of Keely’s since day one,” says Amis. “She loves that it’s so different from any other race suit — marrying her vision with our innovation to offer a new expression of performance apparel on the track.”

The Aerodynamic Frontier

To fight back against the wind, Nike innovators leaned heavily on a fundamental truth of sport science: Skin is slow. To maximize aerodynamic efficiency, the design team doubled down on coverage by introducing a sleek speed hood.“When she first tried the hood on during a fitting session in South Africa, she stepped out laughing and smiling so big, saying, ‘This is mental!’” recalls Amis. “But it’s a true performance piece. The hood streamlines the hairline and manages the chaotic aerodynamics of hair in motion. Of course, Keely’s ponytail is iconic to who she is as a person, so we engineered an exact, strategic opening to let her hair flow out the back flawlessly.”Look closely, and you’ll also see that there are structural slits in the sides of the hood so Hodgkinson’s 18-gram Nike Vision Airelon Force E sunglasses can slot directly against her temples without stretching the fabric, completing the look and providing a psychological edge.

Inevitable turbulence is further tamed by Nike’s fastest vortex generators: 3D-printed delta shapes computationally arrayed along the shoulders, thighs, torso and hood. These tiny devices generate targeted “mini tornadoes,” forcing fast-moving air to attach to the slower airstreams trailing the body rather than separating into a drag-inducing wake.“There’s a beautiful, healthy tension between mathematical function and visual aesthetic,” says Amis. “We spent six months endlessly tweaking, shifting and obsessing over every detail. Even during our final meeting in Manchester, I checked in to see if she wanted to back out of the hood. She told me she was completely all in. When she pulls it up, it creates an absolute zero-distraction zone. She's locked in.”

A Lineage of Bespoke Innovation

Handcrafted almost entirely within the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/lebron-james-innovation-center-nike-sport-research-lab" target="null">LeBron James Innovation Center</a> at <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-philip-h-knight-campus-announcement" target="null">Nike’s Philip H. Knight Campus</a>, Hodgkinson’s speed suit continues Nike’s tradition of creating athlete-specific innovations while showcasing the next evolution of the company’s innovation process. By bringing athletes, designers, engineers and scientists together under one roof, Nike can move faster from insight to invention, turning athlete feedback into performance solutions with unprecedented speed and precision.This culture of innovation began with co-founder Bill Bowerman’s obsession with <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/bill-bowerman-nike-s-original-innovator" target="null">creating custom track spikes for his runners</a> and expanded over Nike’s early years to include bespoke apparel and footwear for elite athletes across disciplines.In 1988, for example, Nike outfitted the U.S. rowing team with an array of bespoke aerodynamic innovations, including a hooded full-body suit. Wheelchair racer Craig Blanchette’s early body suits of the same era helped inspire Nike’s Project Swift, which outfitted Australian sprinter Cathy Freeman in a full-length suit that used zoned aerodynamics to both reduce drag and help regulate muscle temperature.

In 1988, Nike outfitted the U.S. rowing team with an array of aerodynamic suits, including a seamless tank top, shorts, a hooded full-body suit and custom shoes.

1988

Craig Blanchette, a wheelchair racer and 21-time world record holder, signed with Nike in 1988, when the two began experimenting with aerodynamic racing tops and body suits for speed.

The early experiments with Blanchette’s speed suits helped inspire Project Swift in 2000, culminating in a full-length body suit worn by Australian sprinter Cathy Freeman. The suit used principles from zoned aerodynamics to both reduce drag and help regulate muscle temperature.

2000

While the Swift Suit grabbed headlines in Sydney, the Swift Skin became a game-changer for the sport of speed skating. Appearing in both the 2002 and 2006 Olympics, Nike’s body suits helped advance research into efficient airflow and drag reduction on the ice. Nike spent more than 900 hours in wind tunnels and drag tanks testing the product.

2002 and 2006

Following breakthroughs from the Nike Pro TurboSpeed kit in 2012, Nike carried its aerodynamics expertise into single articles of race gear like tops, bottoms, sleeves and socks in the form of Aeroblade technology: tiny geometric, silicone-based nodes designed to help reduce drag. The tech would later be applied to kinesio tape for greater application across the arms and the legs.

2012

Nike’s endeavor to break the 2-hour marathon in 2017 didn’t just mark the advent of the super shoe. It progressed Nike’s deepest research around aerodynamics in apparel design. Every article of gear — from the top to the half tight, from the sock to the tape — was textured with Aeroblade technology to reduce drag.

2017

Marathon champion Eliud Kipchoge attempting to break the 2-hour marathon for Nike's Breaking2.

Designed for Faith Kipyegon’s attempt to break the 4-minute mile, the 2025 Nike Fly Suit brought a new level of precision and specificity to body suit design. Some of the half-sphere Nike Aeronodes on the suit and its sleeves were smaller than a pencil tip.

2025

Middle-distance champion Faith Kipyegon attempting to break the 4-minute mile at Nike’s Breaking4.

Nike carried forward learnings from Freeman’s gold-medal performance in Sydney, debuting Swift Skin speed-skating suits that helped advance research into efficient airflow and drag reduction. The brand’s TurboSpeed and Aeroblade race apparel from the 2010s then raised the bar by including tiny geometric, silicone-based nodes designed to help reduce drag.That technology took on a new level of precision in <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/faith-kipyegon-breaking4-speed-kit-behind-the-design" target="null">Faith Kipyegon’s 2025 Nike Fly Suit</a>, which included half-sphere Nike Aeronodes, some smaller than a pencil tip, to split the air in front of Kipyegon to reduce drag like never before.Hodgkinson’s speed suit advances this decades-long commitment to innovation, empowering her to lock in and pursue her dreams in confidence.Learn more about Hodgkinson’s <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-unveils-keely-hodgkinson-speed-suit-a-bespoke-expression-of-racing-innovation" target="_blank">one-of-one Nike speed suit</a> and her <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/keely-hodgkinson-speed-and-style-converge-in-her-first-signature-nike-running-collection" target="null">first signature Nike Running collection for all athletes</a> in the NIKE, Inc. Newsroom.

Built to Hodgkinson’s exact performance and design specifications, her custom suit is meticulously engineered to help her push the limits of contemporary track and field — marking the latest chapter in Nike’s history of supporting athletes with one-of-one performance innovations.

Making It

How Nike Teamed With Keely Hodgkinson to Create Her Zero-Distraction Speed Suit

About Nike - Stories from Inside NIKE, Inc.

From the tangerine-tinted break of dawn to lychee red sunsets, the technicolor streets of Shanghai are inundated with runners. The sheer number in the Enchanted City and across Greater China has not only boomed — it’s evolved. More and more runners have morphed into distance racers regularly ripping through finish lines 26.2 miles at a time. “Nearly every day there is a different marathon,” says Jean Peng, Principal Product Engineer, who is based at Nike’s world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, and regularly visits its Shanghai headquarters for product development. “The runner has become the marathon runner.”The numbers bear that out. According to the Chinese Athletics Association, in 2014, China hosted 51 official marathons; that number jumped to 749 marathons in 2024, with more than 7 million participants.&nbsp;This reflects a larger global trend: Worldwide, marathon participation is up 18 percent in the past year. From Chicago to Shanghai, nearly twice as many marathoners will toe the starting line in 2026 compared to just five years ago, many for the first time, and almost all with the same goal: to finish.

At Nike, decades of sport science research have gone into propelling the top performers on race day. Elite racers like Eliud Kipchoge have sent the term “super shoe” into the modern cultural zeitgeist, attacking and breaking the 2-hour marathon mark with the help of models like the Nike ZoomX Vaporfly 4% and Alphafly prototypes.&nbsp;While the seven-star finisher strikes the pavement from his toes with the grace of a gazelle and the accolades of a GOAT, Kipchoge exists in extremely rarefied air as a racer who can complete a marathon in 2 hours and some 28,000 steps. The exploding space of road racing includes more than 30 million athletes whose average marathon time is 4.5 hours. Unlike Kipchoge, this marathoner takes roughly 55,000 steps to cover 26.2 miles. And, according to insights Nike’s gathered from participants across the globe, many feel that super shoes — designed to amplify a forefoot strike — can feel too torqued to control, and even look more aggressive than these athletes believe they’re ready for.“Their requirements are much different,” says Peng of the general marathon racer. This runner wants stability, durability and a shoe that delivers performance benefits but also feels accessible, from looks to cost, he explains. Drawing on feedback from Greater China marathoners, the Nike Running team had an opportunity: “We set out to create an inclusive marathon racer with similar performance to our elite super shoes, and at half the price.”

Introducing Swooshfly

When Running Product Line Manager Ryan Shi was briefed on the need to create a super shoe built for twice the steps at half the cost, he responded bluntly. “No way,” said Shi, intimately understanding the daunting math-meets-design equation he faced. For more than a decade, Shi has helped work on the industry-defining race-day footwear made with runners like Kipchoge in mind. In that time, he often heard insights from gen-pop marathoners that, without deep experience wearing a super shoe, “it can feel like the shoe is driving you.” It was clear there was a need for a more approachable model that could stand up to twice the hours of pavement pounding. But how do you get more for less? The answer was to rethink everything, says Shi. “<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-swooshfly-makes-race-day-feel-more-possible" target="_blank">The Nike Swooshfly</a> is an innovation for the runner who wants the momentum to finish a marathon,” he says. “Everything is new.”&nbsp; That newness starts at the core of a super shoe: the carbon fiber plate.

Nike super shoe models like the Alphafly and Vaporfly have eight layers of carbon fiber to create a stiff, propelling plate. With the Swooshfly, Shi and team performed repeated tests in the Shanghai Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL) to see how far they could reduce the number of carbon fiber layers to create more flexibility and stability, but still maintain the amount of stiff spring to propel you forward. Five layers of carbon fiber was the magic number that wear-testers said was the perfect balance of push without sacrificing control. The upshot: This less-is-more benefit also created material savings. Next up, the shoe’s last — a foot-shaped form that designers use to create every component of a shoe, from the midsole to the upper. Swooshfly broke the mold and has an entirely new last, with a wider midfoot and lower arch to address athlete feedback that racing shoes can feel too narrow and cause arch irritation. In testing, Shi found that the wider last not only made the Swooshfly fit true to size, the shoe’s stability improved too.&nbsp;

Then there’s the foam. The Swooshfly debuts a breakthrough: Nike SkyX, a new beaded-foam compound created for the long-lasting energy return that everyday marathoners need.“Nike SkyX is our most lightweight, durable, responsive and cushioned foam yet, and with a manufacturing process that makes it more affordable,” says Shi. He adds that in testing the team found that “It will last your whole race — and the second race, the third race, and races after.”

With TPU beads steamed to different densities for zonal optimization around the shoe’s heel, plate and forefoot, Nike SkyX foam helps provide a heel-to-toe rocker sensation that urges you forward, and energy return where heel-strikers need it most (similar to the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-air-max-dn-official-images" target="_blank">articulated innovation of tuned Air</a>). Designed to compete and complete, every element of the Nike Swooshfly has been specifically engineered for the everyday marathon racer, right down to the sole. On the forefoot, you’ll find Nike’s new <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/acg-unveils-picklejus-big-mountain-trail-runner-with-goatek-traction-innovation" target="_blank">GOATEK rubber</a> to provide increased traction, particularly helpful at puddle-filled water stations, which become far slippier as a race goes on. All this innovation aligned with the needs of marathon racers aiming to cross the finish line in twice the time and double the steps of Kipchoge — and it's competitive with other Nike super shoes. Testing proves that the Swooshfly delivers 16 percent more energy return than the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/vaporfly-4-streakfly-2-official-images" target="null">Nike Vaporfly 4</a> in a men’s size 10. But could Nike Swooshfly match the price brief? “We asked runners in North America what they thought the price was,” says Shi. “Every single one thought it was $200-plus.” To bring back a Shi idiom: No way. The Nike Swooshfly will retail globally for $145, meeting the moment of a more competitive market and an evolving marathon space.

The Race to the Future

Nike Swooshfly, and its Nike SkyX foam, wasn’t only a solution for runners turned racers. It also catalyzed a brand-wide approach to producing cutting-edge products faster.“We saw Nike SkyX was ideal in the Swooshfly, and that solution spurred putting the foam in future running shoes without a plate,” says Bret Schoolmeester, Vice President of Nike Running Footwear. “For us, it begged the question: How can we use this as a model to scale innovation quicker?” Prioritizing tighter teams, leaner logistics and athletes above all, products are already on the way for ACG, Nike Training and Nike Mind categories.

“We’re taking highly calculated risks so that we can get something compelling out to athletes faster than ever, and that’s better for athletes and our business,” says Schoolmeester. As he puts it, speed with intention is always a benefit. And Swooshfly is proof that tight turns, aggressive testing and alignment with factories can create speedy innovation. Peng notes that despite the daunting brief, the shoe took roughly one year to complete — about half the time for a typical new-to-market model.&nbsp; In mission and title, Nike Swooshfly epitomizes a performance-focused race-day option for a marathoner who may not be breaking 2, but who is breaking a barrier. A shoe that, Shi says, he’s most proud of for “its balance.”&nbsp; “Runners often think that paying less means you get less,” he says. “But with this shoe, you get everything you need to do more.”

Nike’s newest super shoe offers stability, durability and competitive performance benefits — all while feeling accessible, from looks to cost.

How Nike Designed the Swooshfly, an Invitation to the Marathon Starting Line

In July of 2026, more than 10 hours into her race, ultra runner and ACG pro <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/trail-runner-yao-miao-is-running-down-new-goals-with-acg" target="_blank">Yao Miao</a> hit the final wall. Specifically, the eleventh and penultimate section of Camins d’Hèr, a 68-mile ultra race in Spain’s Pyrenees mountain range, which passes through the small localities of Arties to Escunhau, a distance of about 5 kilometers. The stretch is a grueling, exposed vertical climb that squeezes every last drop of mental fortitude out of a runner before they tackle the remaining 8 kilometers to the finish. Even the fittest athletes reliably bonk when they reach it.For Miao, the wall was simply one more obstacle to climb. She’d later cross the finish line, fist raised in the air, completing the race in 13:04:34, the course’s fastest-ever time in the women’s field. Yao Miao is one of the most accomplished racers of her generation. She’s one of only six runners worldwide to win two different UTMB finals events. But she also had a secret tool in her race prep: insights from the Nike Innovation Farm Team, an 18-strong ultra runner cohort who trained in a four-month residency at the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/nike-sport-research-lab-environmental-chambers" target="_blank">Nike Sport Research Lab</a> (NSRL) in Beaverton, Oregon.

A Nike team of applied physiologists combined the data from Miao’s springtime visit to the NSRL with a four-hour resilience run done by the Farm Team and crunched the numbers through a predictive model to map out the pace that would land her in a hypothetical finish window. They shared the formula with Miao in the weeks before Camins d’Hèr. The team estimated she'd finish between 12:37 and 13:44, and to put ink on a specific number, 13:09. She’d cross the arch in Vielha within five minutes of that prediction.Thanks in large part to the data from the Farm Team, there was less guesswork to the milestones Miao needed to hit. The group acted like a roster of teammates in her corner, bringing a sharper clarity to her plan.

And that was the whole point. The 15-week Nike Innovation Farm Team, which kicked off in April at Nike’s Philip H. Knight Campus, was created to help Nike innovators uncover the levers behind ultra-endurance running.The science of endurance performance under two hours is fairly well understood. The longer a runner goes, however, the less we know about what causes some to succeed and others to crumble. The standard factors of endurance performance become more dynamic, and unpredictable, especially in ultra-distance mountain running. The distances are outrageous. The terrain shape-shifts in a flash, covering high-altitude climbs and steep descents. There’s a mix of unforgiving surfaces, and the weather can change rapidly. What’s more, a race can last for days, and it’s largely a solo endeavor. You’re likely to be running by yourself for extended periods of time, sometimes for hours. The opportunities for a scientist to intervene naturally and observe how the runner’s body is negotiating the work are few.

What the Farm Team gave Nike researchers was a rare 15-week window to dig into all aspects of the sport and, maybe most important, its elusive performance enhancer: resilience.“In a race, everyone slows down over 13 hours,” says Brett Kirby, PhD, Senior Principal Scientist of Applied Performance Innovation in the Nike Sport Research Lab. “The winner is the one who slows down the least. In other words, the most resilient runner wins. We wanted to study resilience in three main ways: physiologically, biomechanically and psychologically.”With the Farm Team, NSRL scientists wanted to create a realistic, uninterrupted environment to gather enough data to better understand this resilience. The bonus was that the outcomes of their studies should help all runners dial in their training. This could be picking the right program (e.g., what could help you blast through an uphill sprint in hour eight of a race), or the right product to wear for a race course. This scientific foundation for new product solutions extends beyond the pros too, and can help any runner who hits the wall of the mountain and wants to break through.

Nike’s vast backyard in the Pacific Northwest became the Farm Team’s research center. They were embedded in the NSRL and set free in the surrounding Portland area, including the sprawling Forest Park trails and the stunning routes in the Columbia River Gorge.&nbsp;“Time under effort is the variable that makes or breaks an ultra runner’s race,” says Brad Winn, Lead Researcher of Applied Innovation, who served as the program’s head coach over the 15-week protocol. “Time is also the critical piece on the research side. We wanted to spend as much of it with these athletes as possible.”

The program’s name came from two places. One borrows from the farm team concept popular in sports like baseball, where a farm team serves as an important talent pipeline for a franchise. The other comes from one of Nike’s foundational employees, Jeff Johnson. In the mid ’90s, he and Stanford track coach Vin Lananna co-founded the esteemed sub-elite distance-running track team, in many ways a precursor to today’s track clubs. Both inspirations draw from the same purpose: to explore how a dedicated pipeline can, through athlete talent and the exploration of their potential, improve a larger community.There were 18 spots, nine men and nine women, up for grabs on the Farm Team’s roster, and runners applied online beginning in March 2026. Criteria for the program was strict. Selected runners needed to complete all 15 weeks of training, and have the ability to run up to four hours at a sub-elite pace. Nike Innovation received thousands of applications, and had the daunting task of selecting the handful who would be invited to relocate full-time to Beaverton.

The residency’s embedded nature was undoubtedly a challenge. “Moving away for four months has been difficult, on top of working a full-time job," says Alec Hewett, a Farm Team runner who works as a Senior Manager of National Teams at USA Triathlon and is in his first year of marriage. "But the sacrifices were still a no-brainer for me and my wife. Having full support from her and from my job has been awesome.”The 18 runners were divided into two cohorts, each focusing on a different training protocol over 10 weeks. One was a concentric-dominant, more traditional uphill program (concentric refers to the shortening of the muscle under force). The other was an eccentric-dominant program, or one that focused on the lengthening of the muscle under force, translating into downhill workouts. In addition to run-specific workouts, both groups applied their concentric or eccentric focus to assigned strength training workouts. The eccentric groups, for example, would do lifts like descending lunges, paying close attention to the lowering of the weights, whereas the concentric group did a contrasting lift, like a weighted step-up.&nbsp;

The team was given a full array of Nike’s diagnostic tools in the NSRL to help scientists better grasp what was happening under the hood of each runner. For example, every runner’s gait was analyzed through <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/nike-nsrl-form" target="_blank">Nike Form</a>, an algorithmic tool developed in-house by the NSRL to study a runner’s unique biomechanics. Through this data, scientists could study the athletes’ mechanics during long runs, how training impacted their mechanics over the course of the study, how their body interacted with footwear over time, and how race simulations impacted fatigue. After 10 weeks of training, each baseline test was measured again, charting how runners progressed their fitness according to their program.&nbsp;The Farm Team played an important role in testing some of the latest breakthroughs coming out of Nike Innovation, like the recently announced Picklejus, the new ACG model with a cushioning system optimized for big-mountain racing. The roster tested the shoes in the lab, trialing Picklejus during a challenging four-hour treadmill test with changes in both speed and gradient to simulate mountain-like terrain.The team’s comments on the shoe and, specifically, their ability to describe in clear terms what they needed to feel from it helped show what was working well. For example, many runners voiced a need for protective stability without sacrificing snappiness for uphill surges. The Farm Team also tested apparel prototypes that ACG pros like Miao wore for her Camins d’Hèr race.With a trove of scientific data over the 15-week residency (the Nike Form sessions alone gathered some 13 gigabytes of data per runner) the insights move in all directions. They travel down to the general product level and move up to ACG’s roster of pros, who are wringing every possible advantage out of their pre-race training, race-day strategy and post-race recovery.&nbsp;Take Caleb Olson. In October 2025, the NSRL Applied Performance Innovation teammates met with the Western States 100 winner for a mini camp in the desert of St. George, Utah, talking about his typical training and how he’s preparing for UTMB. That exchange cued unanswered questions in trail running, especially the power of downhill running. Olson asked how he could run downhills at full effort rather than conserving energy for the last descent. That question was an impetus for Nike Innovation Farm Team training: to build a training regime that could fortify Olson's body. Nike Innovation teammates created Nike products that would give him an edge — the same products tested at length by the Farm Team cohort.

“Lab data doesn’t win races,” says Kirby. “Conversations do. The data doesn’t mean anything if we can’t connect it to meaningful relationships with our athletes.”The Farm Team program wrapped in late July. Nike scientists now have their own mountain to climb in sorting through the data, and some intriguing results are bubbling up. One of them, says Kirby, is the improvement in physiological, biomechanical and psychological testing in the eccentric training group, which doesn’t resemble a traditional, blue-chip fitness program. On the mega ramp outside the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/lebron-james-innovation-center-nike-sport-research-lab" target="_blank">LeBron James Innovation Center</a>, while the runners completed punishing repeats, some of them assigned to the downhill regimen barely felt like they were breaking a sweat. This gives credibility to a convention-bucking point in the world of training: Eccentric tolerance is a training variable that must be worked into your plan.While the study’s conclusions are ongoing, the takeways are immediate. And that brings us back to Yao Miao, Camins d’Hèr and the wall.

The morning Miao began the race, she had a dedicated physiological cheat sheet at her fingertips, translated into pacing charts by the second over the technical course. It was like a menu at each stop describing which interventions to take, like whether to apply sunscreen, what fuel to eat and why, as well as researched recommendations for what product to wear. This data-backed advice came from Farm Team insights.Miao hit the cooling station at the eleventh stage. The Nike Innovation team had prescribed options: an ice bandana, cold water to pour over her head, salt tablets. They also created a cue card for her technique to help her efficiently scale the ascent: “Head down, shortest stride, poles fully engaged.” Included on that card was a concise summary of the plan to finish the race. It summed up in 27 words what Miao was feeling after more than 10 hours of peak physical exhaustion: “Final Wall. 57 minutes. Heart rate will be 96% the whole time, that IS the plan. You will feel awful, everyone does. From the top, only 8km remain.” Nobody knows exactly what will happen during the twists and turns of an ultra race. But thanks to residency programs like the Farm Team, there’s less mystery in knowing what makes an ultra runner tick.&nbsp;“The people who know athletes best are the ones who spend the most time with them — it’s that simple,” says Winn. “There’s no better way to do that than bringing them here to our house, inviting them in, and doing everything we can to support them.”

See how athlete insights from the new residency program help create better products for every ultra runner.

Trail Running

How the Nike Innovation Farm Team Is Pushing the Science of Ultra Running

Seeing Eliud Kipchoge fly by at a 4:34 marathon pace is catching just a glimpse of the greatest of all time honing his craft. Most of his running career hinges on the thankless, unglamorous, but essential training sessions that build his reserve for breaking records. The Kenyan marathoner is synonymous with the Vaporfly and the Alphafly, the pinnacle of Nike’s racing products. In reality, Kipchoge uses many different shoes during training for different workouts — long, easy runs, fartleks, hills, and more. He doesn’t just need a super shoe. He needs a super trainer —&nbsp;a shoe that borrows traditional components from racing footwear, like carbon fiber plates and unique midsole geometries, and translates them into a more durable shoe for year-round training.&nbsp;<a href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/zoom-fly-6-official-images" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Zoom Fly 6</a> is Eliud’s latest addition to his training quiver for those days when he needs to push the pace. The silhouette is also emblematic of Eliud’s commitment to test, improve and validate Nike Running’s full lineup of race footwear. According to Elliott Heath, Sr. Expert of Running Footwear at Nike, Eliud’s product knowledge borders on the professional.&nbsp;

“We've started to call Eliud our Product Line Manager on the ground,” says Heath. “He’s doing hand sketches and writing dedicated notes about our prototypes — That’s his baseline. Over the last couple years, he’s gone to the next level of building feedback sheets, giving them to his running camp teammates and asking them to give their own notes. <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-and-eliud-kipchoge-celebrate-20-years" rel="noopener noreferrer">He’s the world’s best marathoner</a>, but he actually feels like a member of our product team.”In the past, Eliud has incorporated the Zoom Fly into his rotation, especially the 5, which was a perfect trainer for his easy Monday runs; he’ll step outside his front door and go anywhere from 12 to 18 miles. When he tested the 6, he immediately noticed the lighter weight and more comfortable upper, both of which he relayed to Heath in his soft-spoken, methodical manner. He’s willing to give constructive feedback, too, but always graciously, such as when he recommended adding a slightly more durable material along the outsole, helping the shoe better withstand a rigorous training schedule. “It’s worth giving a thought,” he scribbled in his notes.

Other cues from Eliud, says Heath, are less obvious but just as revealing. A thoughtfully long pause between sentences. A decisive nod of the head about a feature that’s working. Most notably — and this is what happened with the Zoom Fly 6 — he simply smiles, turning the shoe over in his hands.

Eliud Kipchoge on the Zoom Fly 6

Watching Eliud so eagerly review every shoe in Nike’s lineup is inspiring for Heath and his team. Eliud’s notes help ensure that every Nike silhouette serves a distinct purpose. No one’s as qualified to give that precise, attuned feedback as the greatest marathoner of all time.“Eliud’s commitment to testing our shoes is a testament to how we partner with athletes all the time, not just on race day,” says Heath. “What you do in a race is 5% of your running journey. Anyone who’s racing marathons is spending 95% of their time in other shoes, gritting their teeth through the easy and hard miles that aren’t glamorous. Anytime an athlete wants us to be a part of their 95% as well as their 5% on race day, that’s when we have the real potential to better serve our runners.”

How does Nike use athlete feedback? See and hear marathon GOAT Eliud Kipchoge’s line-by-line and word-for-word notes on your next best training shoe.

Fan 101

Hear From Our Ultimate Wear-Tester on the Zoom Fly 6

Run meetups over bar meetups. Discovery jogs to explore a city (maybe your own). Trading screens and calls for trails and greenery. A new wave of people are embracing running through the lens of health, community and fun, and you have ever reason to join them, says Nike running coach Dora Atim. 

Here, Atim — the trail-exploring, run-loving, self-proclaimed "hype gurl" — shares the immediate benefits she says running can give you.

You Get a New Way to Express Joy I feel like we're in a new “running boom” — the third or fourth one I've seen since I've started running, but this wave feels different. There’s a new generation of runners, and they’re into health and wellness, looking for ways to connect with one another. I mean, people still party. But it’s more for celebration — say, we’ve traveled to another country to do a race and now we're gonna party. And there’s movement in that too, right? We're celebrating because we have achieved something. It’s a beautiful space to be in and I feel like I belong in this this kind of shift. I started running because I wanted to get healthier, fitter, but I also wanted to make it accessible to me — the music, the vibes. I used to rave three or four nights a week. Raving — dancing and moving — is catharsis, and running is the same thing. And it’s like you have a new generation that’s taking the rave to the road.You Make Unexpected Connections What I’ve seen from being lucky enough to travel around the world doing races is that, while you have people from all walks of life, all cultures, there’s this common constant of the run, this common bond and love and challenge. And you build this diverse community that you would otherwise never have had if not for running.You Find New Parts of Yourself Running has helped spark my creative streak. I used to feel like I wasn't a creative person. And my friends would say, “What? You’re so creative!” And now I believe that, because I'm doing something that I enjoy, it doesn't feel forced, and because of it, my creativity just flows. I’ll run and think of some new unlock, be inspired to try something new.

"Bags down, shoes on," says Nike Running Coach Dora Atim. Here she's hitting the trails in the Black Forest ahead of the "Nike: Form Follows Motion" exhibition opening at the Vitra Design Museum.

Dora Atim Nike Athlete - Run Basel

You Find New Parts of Your Home I was born and raised in London. I am a true Londoner. And I feel like running around London is truly iconic. You run through new streets, discover new restaurants, you get to see how everyone moves and people watch, and if you’re me, you think “what a crazy place and I love it.” A run is discovery. I remember, during lockdown, running around Canary Wharf, and I saw this building that I always used to notice and draw pictures of as kid. You know kids in school draw fields, the sun, or Big Ben or whatever, but for me it was this building, because I was fascinated by this flashing light that was always on. We’d drive by it, me and my family, and I’d ask my parents, “Why does this light never turn off?” Flash forward 20 years, and as I’m running around Canary Wharf, I take a turn, look up, and there was the building. And suddenly I was young Dora again and I thought, oh my god, that light is still on and flashing! And that’s running. It makes me look at London differently ever time.You Connect With Nature Growing up, all I knew was concrete jungle, fast-paced environment. And years ago, I was living in east London and I went for a trail run. I got so lost, I was absolutely fuming because I see myself as tough and strong and I’m like, I’m not following my phone, I’m gonna follow the trail and take in the nature. My friends call it “Dora’s scenic route,” which means I’m not going to navigate. And suddenly, I round a bend and I see this park and I felt like I wasn’t in London, like I was transported somewhere else.&nbsp;I see this lake — I've never seen such a big lake in London — and the way the trees were just surrounding it and the sun was beaming through it, it looked like a painting. And I thought, I get to see this because I allowed myself to get lost on a run.Wherever You Go, You Become a Local When I travel, I come right off the plane and it’s bags down, shoes on. One of the first things I do is go out on run. And it’s this awesome experience to be able to explore and learn and take a city in — while doing my thing, getting my movement — and it makes me feel like I know the place. Like I’m the local.

For more runner tips and inspo, follow Dora Atim on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/doradontexplore/?hl=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@doradontexplore</a>.

Nike running coach Dora Atim has six reasons for you to put on your shoes now.

The Instant Benefits to Being a Runner

All of Nike’s record-shattering, convention-breaking&nbsp;shoes began as prototypes. Many of them were disguised the same way: shrouded in black.American marathoner Conner Mantz remembers when he received the first prototype of the Vomero Premium in December of 2023. The upper was blacked out. The Zoom Air units sandwiched in the midsole foam, the shoe’s most identifiable feature, were masked with tape.&nbsp;Holding the prototype, he points to a light outline across the midsole. “You can still see the tape lines,” he says. “It was to keep people from seeing the Zoom Air units while I went on my long runs.”This step in the prototyping process, called “blinding,” is one of many ways that Nike researchers and sport scientists set the table for testing new shoes with an athlete. Part of the goal is to keep the shoe undercover from the public for as long as possible. Scientists will hide standout attributes of the shoe, like its midsole profile or its upper, whenever it’s tested in a public setting. But shrouding the prototype in mystery is intended for the athlete, too. The goal when designing these test studies is to minimize any confounding factors that could affect how an athlete performs. That includes getting past any hesitations about how odd, distinct or flat-out wild a prototype might look. Researchers work hard to isolate an athlete’s physical response when they use a new piece of tech. They don’t want any quality of a shoe to prematurely influence an athlete’s feedback. Undistracted, the athlete can focus on the straightforward experience of wearing the shoe, getting a taste for how this mysterious new tool can give them a competitive edge.

Much like its final design, the Vomero Premium’s earliest prototypes drew plenty of knee-jerk reactions at first sight. It nearly falls into a different category of maximalist footwear altogether. To a degree, that's where it belongs. The Vomero Premium is ineligible for World Athletics competition thanks to its 55mm stack height in the heel, a full bed of ZoomX foam, and two exposed Zoom units borrowed from Nike track spikes in the forefoot and the heel.&nbsp;Mantz was in a deciding moment in his competitive season. He was battling a bone injury to his femur, but the 2024 U.S. Olympic marathon Trials were fast approaching, which would determine who traveled to Paris later that summer to compete for a medal. Training was painful at times. He couldn’t get in the mileage he needed. In his transition back to road running, he needed a bold solution to help build back his stamina. What he got was a bold, new prototype to test out. But the leap from a prototype’s presentation to its adoption is easier said than done.“What I needed in my training shoe was something that could get my confidence back up,” says Mantz. “When my team showed me this new Nike prototype, it was unlike anything I’d seen before. It was a lot. You see this, and you think it’s going to be clunky to run in.”

Testing innovative prototypes with new cushioning systems like that of the Vomero Premium is a thorough process. It includes hours of exchanges between athletes, designers and scientists about which qualities of the shoe need to be turned up and which should be toned down. Just as important in the process, though, is another tall task: to channel positive belief in a product that might look and feel different from what an athlete is used to wearing.Sometimes a prototype must fight against historical preconceptions if it contains technology that was never thought to “belong” in a particular sport. Take the Nike Maxfly sprint spike. Introduced in Tokyo in 2021, the spike was the first to bring Air Zoom to the 100 meters. Seeing the pronounced Air unit in the forefoot was unusual, particularly for an event that suggests a less-is-more approach for footwear. Weren’t simpler, more minimal spikes better? Fast forward to Tokyo’s conclusion, and athletes wore the Maxfly and medaled in both the men and women’s 100 meters — and the 200-meter, the 400-meter, the 800-meter and the relay events.&nbsp;A clear premise, to dial in the plated airbag design for sprint biomechanical loads, was achieved both through adoption and through race performances.How do you convince athletes that, while what they’re currently wearing may work,&nbsp;this&nbsp;prototype they’re holding in their hands has the makings of something special?“Our main focus is trust,” says Tobie Hatfield, Nike Senior Director, Athlete* Innovation. “If athletes don’t know that you’re looking out for them as individuals, they’ll never trust the product you make for them. Everything we do has to be built on earning their trust.”Encouraging an athlete to adopt a new shoe depends on stoking that trust — emotionally, psychologically and, in the case of a shoe, biomechanically.

Trace all shoes back to their first prototypes, and you’ll find that most designs are intentionally made as visually subdued versions of the final silhouette. This allows for controlled research; the more basic a shoe looks, the less likely an athlete will form a biased opinion about it. Emily Farina, Sr. Principal, Running Footwear Research in the NSRL, recalls the earliest testing of the Vaporfly 4% prototype in the mid 2010s. She says the shoe’s initial field research went relatively unnoticed, thanks in large part to the anonymous-looking prototype. The early design would be the starting point for the groundbreaking Vaporfly 4% Elite worn by Eliud Kipchoge in Breaking 2. “If you saw the early prototype in 2015, it was hard to really know what you were looking at,” says Farina, referring to its stack height and rocker shape, two outlying qualities which have become standard for that new era of cushioned running shoes. “Validation relied on what you felt and how you performed, not what you could see. Nike brought the prototype to Eliud's running camp in Kenya. A lot of the runners had trouble understanding how the design could make them faster. That is, until they took the shoes for a tempo run, looked down at their watches, and realized they’d cut their pace by 30 seconds or more while exerting the same effort.”

The stopwatch is one of the simplest signs of biomechanical efficiency. Are you able to run faster for the same effort? If the answer is yes, persuading an athlete to continue testing a new prototype becomes a lot simpler, no matter how extreme it looks. Oftentimes the athlete comes to this realization of their improved performance in a kind of epiphany, like in the scene Farina describes, when a runner is able to accomplish something they weren't expecting and feel great while doing it. For Conner Mantz, his came during a long run in Utah, where he laced up the Vomero Premium prototype for a 22-miler with his training partners, still building up his base fitness due to the injury. He ran four of those miles at a snappy 4:30 pace. Mantz was shocked by how good he felt.“That’s when I started thinking to myself, maybe there’s something special here,” says Mantz, laughing how the prototype’s stealthy design drove his teammates nuts. “They’d ask me to just tell them what this new shoe was. I’d tell them, ‘Don’t worry about it.’”Other athletes need more information to trust a prototype. That’s why Nike scientists test athlete responses to a range of stimuli, dubbed “signals.” In footwear research, signals are different ways to evaluate a shoe’s effect on performance.When world champion Faith Kipyegon visited the NSRL in September of 2024, she underwent a number of tests that gave Nike scientists a quantitative launching pad for how to serve Faith in preparation for her four-minute mile attempt the following year. She underwent a VO2 Max test to explore her personal capacity. Another signal that's typical of NSRL visits from elite runners is a submax VO2 test, in which the athlete runs on a treadmill and swaps in different shoes while they are hooked up to an oxygen mask. The test results measure the body’s use of oxygen to perform a task. Here, in comparing one shoe to another, proof of improved performance comes through improved physiological stats.

Along with creating Faith's one-of-one track spike, Nike provided her with a whole range of Nike tools to supplement her training for Breaking4, including the not-yet-released Vomero Premium for her recovery runs.

"The Vomero Premium was a key part of my training journey," says Faith. "It's so soft, cushioned and comfortable, and it helps me train harder with less impact to allow me to recover faster and stay focused on my goal."

Breaking the Mold for Breaking4

New doesn’t always mean perfect. In the case of Faith’s attempt, designers listened to every bit of her critical feedback to get her Victory Elite FK prototype just right, like expanding the width in the forefoot or adding spikes for better traction at toe-off. Mantz’ review of the Vomero Premium prototypes were just as honest. The first prototype needed a more supportive upper, he told Nike designers and developers. After a few weeks, he had an updated version on his feet, though the second prototype felt less like a recovery shoe and more like a speedy, Alphafly-esuqe shoe. He relayed his feedback to the design teams. Another one of the updated versions had almost gone too extreme on the cushioning. It was too soft, said Mantz. The teams adjusted the midsole to find a happy medium between too soft and too race-y."Conner would always give us straight, honest feedback, which is vital to our process," says Rachel Nichols, Lead Developer, Nike Running. The feedback loop encompassed a variety of teammates across product design, working together to address Mantz' detailed review of each prototype.On and on the dialogue went, up to a fifth version of the prototype, and this one was…just right. He was back to logging 120+ mile training weeks, and what’s more, he was feeling confident again, equipped with a training shoe that was working with his body through the high volume.

You know where the story goes from here. Mantz would go on to win the 2024 US Olympic Trials, where he secured his spot for Paris, finishing eighth. Now, Mantz is using every tool in his arsenal, including the Vomero Premium, to chase a new personal milestone at the 2025 Chicago marathon: the American record of 2:05:38.&nbsp;“The Vomero Premium became this incredibly important shoe in my career. Training in the shoe helped me feel like myself again,” says Mantz. “I’m really excited for people to be able to experience it. Going through the process of testing those early prototypes, helping make the final shoe as good as it can be, meant a lot to me.”

Unflinching athlete feedback makes all products better. If a prototype has any chance to take off, incomplete versions need to be dismantled and built back up. Trust with athletes is formed not just through the successes, says Hatfield. It's formed through the failures, requiring the willingness to acknowledge when a product fell short. Shoes are never tested in a technological vacuum. Spreadsheets of positive data, oxygen masks and shrouded midsoles are all part of the magic. But trust in a new prototype begins and ends with the ordinary, relational act of listening to what athletes need.“We never want a shoe to be disguised as a solution that was looking for a problem,” says Hatfield. “That’s backwards. A shoe should start by considering a problem that needs a solution. Listening to athletes gets to the heart of their needs, and that’s where trust is formed."

Davis Jones is a Nike innovation, design and product editor. His areas of interest include sport science, performance product design and the history of sport.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Born and raised in Oregon, Davis attended the University of San Diego. Upon graduating, he worked as an editorial intern for Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He was a writer and editor for Surfer magazine before returning to the Pacific Northwest to work for Nike in 2018.&nbsp;

Davis Jones

Conner Mantz Feature Loop

How do you convince athletes that, while what they’re currently wearing may work, the prototype they’re holding in their hands has the makings of something special?

Nike Design

Nike Sports Science

How We Partner With Athletes On New Prototypes

If you’ve ever cued up a <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.nike.com/nrc-app" target="null">Nike Run Club</a> (NRC) session, you know his voice. He’s the one in your ears every time you lace up and head out the door, equal parts coach, philosopher and hype man. Chris Bennett, or “Coach B” to the running world, is Nike’s Global Running Head Coach and the man behind the mic on the NRC app.&nbsp;He’s one of those coaches who always knows what to say at mile 3. You find yourself nodding along mid-run, digging deeper because he’s spurring you on. As the voice behind the free running app with users worldwide, Bennett has become widely popular, his mantras so deeply embedded in running culture that they’ve taken on a life of their own across Reddit threads and social media posts. “Struggling doesn't mean failure.” “If you can't do the run you want to do, do the run you can do.” “Kindness is hardcore.” They’re the kind of lines people write on mirrors and carry through difficult days that have nothing to do with running.

A competitive runner from New Jersey, Bennett ran at UNC-Chapel Hill before coaching future Olympians at the post-collegiate level and building what became the Northeast’s most successful high school cross-country program. When Nike asked him to come on as a full-time coach in 2014, he wrote his entire coaching philosophy down on a legal pad and handed it over. Those notes became the NRC Truths, and he’s been building on them ever since.Now, he’s distilled that philosophy into his first book, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/this-is-about-running-this-is-not-about-running-chris-bennett?variant=44778258399266&amp;utm_source=ig&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=link_in_bio&amp;fbclid=PAdGRleAS8sKxwZG9mAmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDzEyNDAyNDU3NDI4NzQxNAABp23OaaCx00NqpSE4294E1HzGDZG4Vcf0Mi5xT0GO6m1eiPpAO8w8HgIVcvCN_aem_MgddCEZLLg7pnZx8cJXz5Q" target="">This Is About Running. This Is Not About Running,</a> a motivational guide that will be released this fall and is available for preorder. It’s a title that, if you know anything about Coach B, tells you everything. Bennett’s not stopping there. Beginning July 7, as part of Nike's 2026 After Dark Tour, his popular podcast will feature a months-long series of conversations with women across the world. From elite athletes to first-time racers, Coach B is passing the mic to women who are changing the game and redefining what’s possible.&nbsp;Below, he talks about why he fell in love with running; what he believes about the sport; and why the job, as he sees it, is never finished.

How did you get into this line of work, and what led you to where you are today?I’ve been running basically my entire life. I was the fourth of five kids, so if you wanted to keep up with your older sister and brothers, you had to move. That was the first inspiration to run.I grew up in New Jersey, where there’s a really rich tradition of cross-country and track and field at the youth level. It was just something you did. I was introduced to it as a team sport, which I think was really important. I wasn’t in love with running initially — I was in love with having teammates, and that’s what bridged the gap between trying the sport and dedicating myself to it. I was incredibly lazy until I made the connection that my laziness was hurting the rest of the team. That’s what actually got me to train consistently and intelligently. It wasn’t about me, it was about the fact that I was letting my team down.I got to run for the Nike Farm Team, a post-collegiate Olympic-development team at Stanford University, and my first coach there was Jeff Johnson — employee No. 1 at Nike and a good friend to this day. I ran for them for five years. I wasn’t trying to make the Olympic team, just the trials. But I was training with people who were, and it was a really incredible experience.I had already decided in high school that I wanted to coach and teach. When Nike eventually sat me down and asked what I would do if I were coaching the runners who met at their New York City stores, I mapped out a weekly schedule, the kind you’d give any serious athlete. And that’s how I coach. Just because they’re not elite doesn’t mean I wouldn’t treat them like they are. You don’t give somebody less of a regimen because they have less speed.

What is it about the Guided Run format and your specific approach that makes people connect with you the way they do?When it’s just audio, you’re only engaging with one of their senses, which I think is super powerful. People become more focused on what you’re saying. With video, people are paying attention to your hand movements, they’re paying attention to the background, their mind starts to drift. But when it’s just sound, they’re more tuned in, which means that what I’m saying has to be honest. When people are hyper-focused, their BS detector is on high.&nbsp;When we first started creating these, I had a couple of rules. One was that this is unfiltered. There isn’t anyone between me and the athlete. I’ve always been adamant that if I was going to do this, it was going to stay unbelievably human. It wasn’t going to be like other guided runs. It was going to be grounded in the coaching philosophy that I espouse, which is that kindness is hardcore, and that the best way for athletes to be able to break through barriers or clear hurdles is for them to be supported while they’re trying to do it. I won’t lie to them. I want them to become their own best coach. With every Guided Run, I want them to need me less and less. I want the athlete to own this. When I’m telling them to do something, they have the final decision.&nbsp;People develop a relationship with me. There are a lot of people I’ve never met, but we’ve gone through some stuff. When we do finally meet, it’s often a very emotional meeting. That connection is so important. We’re in a world where disconnection is only getting greater and greater. Knowing that this is a digital format and we’re not in person, I wanted to make sure it was as human as possible. That means that like with human interactions, I ramble. I go off on tangents. I make really bad jokes. I have runs called the “It’s Okay 5K,” the “Struggle Run,” the “Tough Day, Easy Run,” the “Thank You Run.”&nbsp;My philosophy is that when you go for a run, it should be about more than running. I think that’s why the connection with listeners has been so intense and durable over the years. You’re often described as someone who can make a person believe they’re a runner before they’ve ever even gone for a run. Where does that come from?Well, first, I really believe it, so that helps. But I also think it comes down to the understanding that coaches don’t create anything, coaches uncover things. When you understand that, it makes your job so much easier. I don’t have to create a runner, all I have to do is convince you that you can do things you don’t believe you can do.&nbsp;I like to keep the bar low intentionally. I never say, “I can get you to run a marathon.” I say, “I can get you to run from here to the end of the street.” You don’t believe that counts as a run. My job is to convince you that it does. The second you realize that counts as a run, you’ve experienced success. Inevitably, what you think next is, I could have gone a little further. I could have gone a little faster. I can do that again. And that’s how it all starts.

One of your more famous quips is, “If you can’t do the run you want to do, do the run you can do.” What do you mean by that?As a runner myself, I used to sometimes put off runs until very late in the day, and then I’d get to a point where it was late and I wasn’t going to be able to run for as long as I wanted to. I would convince myself that if I couldn’t do the full run, what’s the point?&nbsp;It was that all-or-nothing mentality. But there’s so much something between all and nothing. If you’ve got 20 minutes, that’s all you’ve got. So if you run for 20 minutes, you’re actually giving it 100 percent of what you’ve got. How can you diminish yourself for giving it 100 percent of what you could do?This idea ended up in a Guided Run when I was working with Michael Orenstein, NRC’s former Head of Product, and one of the guys who helped develop the runs early on. He was going to a pottery class and he said, “I'm not going to be able to run today, I’ve got to rush.” And I said, “When’s the class?” He told me it was 35 minutes from then and a 20-minute drive, so I said, “Why don’t you just go run for five minutes?” I remember him saying, “Five minutes? That’s not a real run.” And I said, “Five minutes is the only run you can do.”I recorded the “Five-Minute Run,” put that line in there, and it blew up. That was about seven years ago, and it’s one of my most quoted lines ever.

You have a book coming out called This Is About Running. This Is Not About Running. Can you talk about the book and elaborate more on the title?It’s another one of those things I would casually say that kind of took off. I’d say it after making a point that was seemingly about running, but that was really about something bigger. It goes back to coaching kids. I had to make sure that the 90 minutes I had with them every day counted. I wanted them to have the opportunity to learn something about life. I felt like I would be a failure as a coach if the only thing they walked away with was the ability to go farther or go faster.&nbsp;I wanted to give them strengths and habits they could carry into the rest of their lives. How you deal with struggle, how you have relationships with people, how you get through hard times, how you dig deeper, how you act as a supportive teammate to others — these are things that go on during practice. You have to get across to your athletes or your students that these are things you will take with you out of here. Don’t leave this at practice. Bring this home.“This is about running, this is not about running” has been the foundation of my coaching for 18 years. And the book embodies that —&nbsp;if you’re a runner, whether a new runner or long-time runner, you’re going to end the book and you’re going to be a better runner. But if you’ve never gone for a run before in your life, you’re going to be a better person. It doesn’t need to lead to you running.Regardless of where you’re coming from, whether you’re about to graduate the eighth grade, going through a breakup, training for a marathon or taking on any other kind of challenge, this book is for you. It’s about running. But it’s also about much more than running.<ul><li><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/this-is-about-running-this-is-not-about-running-chris-bennett?variant=44778258399266&amp;utm_source=ig&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=link_in_bio&amp;fbclid=PAdGRleAS8sKxwZG9mAmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDzEyNDAyNDU3NDI4NzQxNAABp23OaaCx00NqpSE4294E1HzGDZG4Vcf0Mi5xT0GO6m1eiPpAO8w8HgIVcvCN_aem_MgddCEZLLg7pnZx8cJXz5Q" target="_blank">Pre-order copy a copy of Coach B's book in the USA</a></li><li><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://lnkfi.re/yfzwUn?utm_source=ig&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=link_in_bio&amp;fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQPOTM2NjE5NzQzMzkyNDU5AAGnqCOF01UFfBXwJ8XK36zI9N7fDAttdKU2JBLcRLWR75KFBh8RYUAatrhGyYM_aem_Oa3G0bKKyFdPFbYhtx6OHA" target="_blank">Pre-order a copy of Coach B's book in the UK, Canada, Australia, NZ and Europe</a> </li></ul>

Whether you're a first-time runner or practically pro, you'll be able to use the advice from Chris Bennett — equal parts coach, philosopher and hype man.

Talking Craft

5 Questions With Nike Running’s Coach Bennett

See How We Serve Runners

Stories from inside NIKE, Inc.

Story Landing

Nike Sportswear

Tom Sachs Demerits Video

Tom Sachs on Wearing His Demerits with Pride

Georgia Hunter Bell Takes the Nike FlyWeb Bra to Athlos London

Basketball

Behind the Design of the Caitlin 1

Short Stories

Fans of the Swoosh know the brand can design a covetable shoe. What takes that feat to the next level: designing one that’s built to swagger and perform — then be taken apart and recycled.That was the remit for the Nike&nbsp;ISPA team. ISPA (Improvise, Scavenge, Protect, Adapt) is a Nike design philosophy that challenges creators to experiment, break molds and reimagine products. In this case, it helps move Nike closer to its circular vision — a closed-loop system that yields no waste — to help protect the planet and the future of sport.Recently, the ISPA team debuted two head-turning new footwear models that show the brand’s innovative capabilities and foretell its future&nbsp;in circular design. <h3>The Intent</h3>For more than 30 years, Nike teams have pursued design solutions in service of the athlete and the planet. They’ve unlocked new, lower-impact materials (see:&nbsp;Nike Grind,&nbsp;Nike Air) and created pinnacle performance footwear and iconic lifestyle silhouettes leveraging recycled content (see:&nbsp;Alphafly Next Nature, the&nbsp;2022 Move to Zero collections). As the climate crisis has intensified for athletes&nbsp;around the world, Nike teams have shifted into a higher gear, embracing circular design principles as creative&nbsp;accelerants. Those include the 10 principles outlined in the Nike&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nikecirculardesign.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Circular Design Guide</a>, an open-source workbook to share learnings and insights with the larger design community and anyone interested in how design can help lessen impact on the planet.Here, the&nbsp;ISPA&nbsp;team considered the circular design principle of “disassembly,” or&nbsp;the ability to easily take a product apart to recycle its contents, one of the more challenging principles to implement in footwear design. A good shoe is flexible and durable. Traditionally, designers use glue and other bonding elements to achieve these aims, but that makes a shoe nearly impossible to disassemble and recycle. Recycling shoes usually requires shredding, an energy-intensive process that limits how the recycled materials can be used. Creating a shoe that can be taken apart would reduce the carbon footprint of the product and open up new possibilities for its life cycle. <h3>The Innovations</h3>The ISPA team tackled the disassembly challenge. “Designed in partnership with engineering, digital product creation and development, these shoes are completely informed by method of make — it really is a case of form following function,” says Darryl Matthews, VP, Catalyst Footwear Product Design. “Our hope is that these ideas and aesthetics become normalized,&nbsp;accelerating&nbsp;our ability to imagine how shoes will continue to evolve in the future.”

<h3>The Nike ISPA Link</h3>This futuristic silhouette features three interlocking modules connected without glue that can be taken apart and dropped off at Nike stores offering the Recycling &amp; Donation service.

The midsole is made up of pegs that fit into openings engineered into the upper. This makes for an exceptional fit that is comfortable, is stable and breathes well, according to the 40 athletes&nbsp;who logged some 200 hours in the prototype.

From a manufacturing standpoint, the Link is revolutionary in its simplicity. A pair of Links take about eight minutes to assemble — a fraction of the average time needed for a traditional sneaker — thanks to a custom-made manufacturing jig and the fact that the shoe doesn’t require the time-intensive gluing process to construct its midsole. Finally, the assembly of the shoe is done without the need for conventional energy-intensive processes like cooling, heating and conveyer belt systems.

<h3>The ISPA Link Axis</h3>Make the bold bolder. That’s the vibe of the <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-debuts-the-ispa-link-axis-an-exploration-into-circular-design" rel="noopener noreferrer">Link Axis</a>, which builds on and advances the Link’s sustainable intent. The Link Axis has a 100 percent recycled polyester Flyknit upper that’s precisely engineered to fit over the outsole (compared to the traditional cut-and-sew method used for the Link), and its 100 percent recycled TPU tooling was achieved by using scrap airbag material.

The Link Axis is the new pinnacle for disassembly and embodies the circular design principles of material choice, waste avoidance and refurbishment.

The shoe also has a 20 percent recycled TPU cage. Because recycling changes some material properties, the cage is an exercise in balancing the desire to use recycled content with the need for durability and traction. The ISPA team continues to explore new developments in this space.

Nike has explored disassembly and interlocking modular designs before, in the 2003 Presto Clip...

2003

...and the 2005 Zvezdochka, created in collaboration with industrial designer Marc Newson. These early iterations paved the way for the ISPA Link and ISPA Link Axis.

2005

Past Inspiration

<h3>What's Next</h3>For mold-breaking models like the Link and Link Axis to have full impact, the innovation must be scaled. That action is underway. A holistic look at Nike&nbsp;product lines and supply chains are already determining where new approaches can be implemented to reach a wider audience and to move closer to <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/impact" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nike's sustainability goals for 2025</a> and beyond.True scale also requires robust cross-industry collaboration to create the business models and infrastructure that make it possible to recycle products. To that end, Nike is building partnerships to grow its recycling capabilities, and it’s investing in product take-back consumer programs across the world that will help grow its ability to repurpose end-of-life products.As essential: By embracing radical new aesthetics like the Link and Link Axis, Nike is signaling the importance of circular systems for fighting climate change and inviting consumers and the design community to engage in a conversation about it.To that end, Nike was proud to participate in&nbsp;“<a href="https://www.design-museum.de/en/exhibitions/detailpages/plastic.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Plastic: Remaking Our World</a>,” an exhibition at Germany’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.design-museum.de/en/information.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Vitra Design Museum</a>, one of the world’s leading design institutions. The exhibit highlighted the exploration of design and evolutionary journey behind the ISPA Link Axis, and was a unique window into the brand’s approach to innovative design with sustainable intent.With the Link and Link Axis, Nike is further accelerating its move toward a circular, zero-carbon and zero-waste future. As Nike Chief Innovation Officer John Hoke puts it, “We have a responsibility to consider the complete design solution: how we source, make, use, return and ultimately reimagine product. The goal is to make matter&nbsp;matter&nbsp;more.”

The ISPA Link and ISPA Link Axis, examples of design for disassembly, are innovative catalysts that move the brand closer to a circular future.

Why We're Making Shoes You Can Take Apart

Why Nike Is Making Shoes You Can Take Apart

How It Started

Nike invests in play because an active generation means a healthier and more equitable future for everyone. And young people need certain things to experience play. They need caring, trained adults who are committed to empowering them. They need the right equipment to be able to confidently play. And above all, they need the opportunity to play, and this includes having access to&nbsp;safe and inclusive spaces in the local community.SHAPA Soweto was unveiled in the summer of 2010 as one such community of play. It began as a world-class football training facility serving the next generation of footballers in Soweto, a township in South Africa. The approach was straightforward: Organize top-of-the line football clinics to inspire young people through sport, and along the way, teach them important life skills in the form of HIV/AIDS education. The facility’s unique mix of public and private partnerships helped shape a first-rate training ground for more than 20,000 young footballers, launched on the eve of that summer’s pinnacle football tournament in Johannesburg.

How It Evolved

Nike’s investment in South Africa is nothing new. For decades, the company has&nbsp;committed to removing barriers to sport in South Africa and using sport as a tool for education. With partnerships like Grassroots Soccer and Sport for Social Change, Nike has long had a shared relationship with the country built on helping communities thrive. That’s why a relaunch of SHAPA Soweto was a natural next step, especially when football events like the Soweto Derby reflect a fan culture that’s been blossoming since the 2010 global premier tournament.

Relaunched in November 2021, the updated SHAPA Soweto is still a hub for football, and now also includes dedicated spaces for&nbsp;basketball, running, training, dance, judo and skateboarding. We know communities are made better when young people are given the creative freedom to discover the activities&nbsp;that move them, in sport and in life. That’s the intent behind the revamped center: Create a&nbsp;place where young people can find&nbsp;sports that match their interests.The original vision to facilitate local partnerships has also expanded with the reopening. As part of Nike’s Made to Play commitment to get kids moving, SHAPA will deliver the Active Afterschools program to more than 300 kids across a range of sports, like football and running. Masai AC, an athletics club founded by middle-distance runner Caster Semenya, will also have a dedicated training space at SHAPA Soweto, building on&nbsp;Semenya’s vision to make running and education more accessible to disenfranchised youth. Other partners include Tarryn&nbsp;“TNT” Alberts&nbsp;for dance, Banesa for yoga, and Girls Skate South Africa.“Before SHAPA, we knew that we could help provide access to sport for young people in the area, but we didn’t have the proper infrastructure. No place to train was the main barrier we faced. SHAPA is what we needed,” says Semenya, speaking to her own experience growing up. “Now that it’s back, young people will be able to surround themselves with the right people and the right structure to explore different sports.”Factor in plenty of open-layout workspaces, a makers’&nbsp;studio, and&nbsp;a community garden, and young people will find a versatile, encouraging place to create relationships, chase their goals&nbsp;and fuel new futures.

One piece of SHAPA Soweto's identity that remains from its original version is its beautiful football playing fields. Two full-sized pitches and two 5-a-side pitches surround the main building.

As part of SHAPA's vision to broaden access to new sports, the facility includes a 300-meter running track, a basketball court and a skate park.

Nike partnered with local artists to design custom illustrations and installations throughout the facility.

The Evolution of the SHAPA Soweto Training Center

This November, Soweto will reopen the doors of Nike's SHAPA Soweto, where young athletes will find an expanded playing ground to nurture creative talent, connect with community and discover the joy of sport — through dance, running, football, skateboarding and more.