10 Years of Super Shoe Loop

Rachel Cavanaugh is a Portland-based freelance writer who covers food, lifestyle, travel, fitness, adventure and the outdoors. Her work has appeared in Men’s Journal, Outdoor Life, GearJunkie, MSN, Yahoo, The Independent, The Hollywood Reporter, Digital Trends, Bustle, Elite Daily, Mic, Travel Oregon, Matador Network and others. She has a background in digital production and brand storytelling and holds a journalism degree from the University of Montana.

Rachel Cavanaugh

In 2014, a prominent sports-science journalist predicted that it would be 2075 before a human being ran a sub-2-hour marathon. The following year, researchers said it was unlikely to happen before the end of the century.There was something the experts didn’t know, though: Even as those projections were being made, a team of Nike scientists in a lab far from public view was already at work on a project that would shatter the predictions, collapsing the timeline by decades and fundamentally changing the sport of marathon running.

The Math of Impossible

In the mid 2010s, the marathon world record stood at 2:02:57. Closing the remaining gap would require the world’s best runners to sustain unprecedented speed over 26.2 miles without burning through their energy reserves —&nbsp;a feat still thought to be beyond the limits of human performance.Inside the Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL), scientists had quietly begun asking a simple question: What if everyone was wrong?

To find the answer, they turned to research that had been underway for years. Scientists at the NSRL had been studying fatigue, examining how to define and quantify it across different sports and athletes, how it affected performance and injury, and how Nike might help mitigate its effects.“Fatigue is universal. It’s something every athlete, at every level, experiences,” says Matthew Nurse, Nike Chief Science Officer and Vice President, NSRL. “We’d spent years studying how it affects performance and injury and how we might mitigate those effects. By the time we began looking at the 2-hour marathon, the ingredients were already on the table.”With the 2-hour marathon now in their sights, the team began doing the math. How much faster would the world’s best marathoners need to get? And how much of that improvement could come from their footwear?The calculations pointed to an enormous jump —&nbsp;to break 2 hours, the best would need to get roughly 3% faster, and likely improve their running economy by more than 3%. In a sport where records were typically chipped away in seconds over many years, they were looking to shave off 3 minutes in a single leap.“The idea of taking 3 minutes off in one go sounded crazy,” recalls Stefan Guest, VP, Creative Director, Global Football, who was leading running footwear innovation design at the time. “Yet we knew enough internally that we might just do it.”

Dreaming Big

The possibility caught the attention of the late Sandy Bodecker, then Nike’s Vice President of Special Projects, who’d spent decades <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/i-want-brazil-the-four-years-that-launched-nike-football" target="null">building a reputation around pursuing ideas others considered unattainable.</a>&nbsp;With Bodecker’s backing, the team began looking for where those some 180 seconds of gains might come from.The prevailing wisdom around marathon footwear at the time was that if you wanted to make a racing shoe faster, you had to make it lighter. For years, that had meant stripping shoes down. Making them lower, flatter, thinner. Removing as much material as possible while leaving just enough cushioning to carry a runner through 26.2 miles and roughly 28,000 steps.Nike had already pushed that formula close to its limit. There was only so much material that designers could remove before there was nothing left.“We were exhausting that path,” Guest remembers. “You could keep making it thinner and thinner and lighter and lighter, but at some point, the shoe was going to disintegrate.”Researchers already knew that other footwear properties, including cushioning and plate stiffness, could improve running economy. But the gains had been relatively small, and what benefited one athlete didn't necessarily benefit another.Reaching a sub-2 goal, then, would require the brand to rethink its approach to speed entirely and create something completely new.

A New Formula for Speed

The breakthrough would come thousands of miles away, at a lesser-known materials manufacturer in the United Kingdom.Back then, most athletic footwear foams were made using a chemical process. But with the Swoosh in search of a new way forward, Denis Schiller, now Nike Senior Footwear Material Researcher, made a discovery: Zotefoams, a British materials company, had recently developed an approach that used extreme pressure to force nitrogen into its foam, resulting in a material that was significantly lighter while returning more energy.“We got this massive unlock all in one material: better-quality foam, more energy return, lighter weight, and it also turned out to be more resilient than we expected,” says Nike Footwear Developer Chris Cook, who worked on the project’s earliest prototypes.The unlock would eventually become known as ZoomX.

Numbers on the Screen

With the new lighter-weight foam came a new sense of possibility. For the first time, Nike could add more cushioning without the weight penalty that had traditionally come with it. Instead of continuing to strip material away, designers could begin adding it back, getting more energy return in the process.But the team was still chasing an unimaginable target: To erase nearly 3 minutes from the world’s fastest marathon time, the new technology would have to deliver a dramatic improvement in running economy, or how much energy you use to maintain your pace.They began experimenting with how much foam they could put underfoot and how it might work together with another emerging piece of the shoe equation: a curved carbon-fiber plate. Rather than simply making the plate stiffer, the team engineered its shape and curvature to reduce the biomechanical load on the runner.Together, the two technologies created a new kind of system, combining cushioning, stiffness and energy return in a way racing shoes hadn’t before. With each step, the curved plate worked in concert with the lightweight, energy-returning foam to reduce the amount of energy required to maintain pace.

As the pieces began coming together, the team built a series of prototypes with the NSRL to find out if the theoretical gains would translate to better results when athletes ran in them in the real world.Emily Farina, now Nike’s Senior Principal Researcher, NSRL, was one of the researchers conducting those early studies, using biomechanics to drive the footwear design. Part of her role involved measuring athletes’ oxygen consumption as they ran at a controlled speed — they wore oxygen masks as they ran on a treadmill — and tracking how much energy it took to maintain their pace. The PhD-trained researcher recalls sitting behind her monitor as the data began coming in.“I’m watching the screen, and I’m seeing the numbers, and I did a double take," she recalls. “I almost wanted to check the mask: ‘Is this working?’”The improvement in metabolic cost was so striking that Farina immediately understood a significant moment was unfolding.“The numbers that were popping up on the screen in real time were different from anything we’d previously seen,” she says. “Before we even analyzed the data, I knew something big was happening.”When she calculated the results, Farina’s instincts were confirmed. Runners in the new prototypes were seeing a 4 percent boost in running economy compared with Nike’s previous racing shoe. Even more rare, every runner was getting the benefit.With the numbers to back up their new formula, designers began turning the prototype into a racing shoe. What emerged was a piece of footwear the world would soon know as the Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4%.

Speed Without Sacrifice

As designers continued working with the new foam and the Vaporfly began taking shape, a secondary benefit soon became clear, one no one had expected. The same formula that was producing marked gains in speed was also delivering something rarely associated with racing shoes at the time: comfort.For generations of distance runners up to that point, going faster had generally meant giving something up. The lightest racing shoes offered little protection from the pavement, and the pounding on their feet was simply part of racing.“The mindset at the time was that there was an inverse relationship between speed and comfort,” says Elliott Heath, Nike’s Running Lead for Sport Innovation Studio. “It was just accepted that to be the fastest, you had to sacrifice part of your body.”

Carrie Dimoff, a former U.S. Olympic Trials marathoner who joined Nike Innovation in 2016, knew the tradeoff well. She’d spent years racing in the thin, lightweight flats that dominated the sport at the time.But working at Nike meant she understood the benefits of the Vaporfly before the masses. When she began racing in it, the difference was immediate.“When I stood on the starting line of the Boston Marathon in 2017, it was when Vaporfly was still pretty early and unknown. It felt like having a secret edge,” she recalls.Now Product Director, Footwear Innovation, Dimoff remembers looking at fellow competitors wearing the thin racing flats that had long defined the category and feeling sorry for them.“I was standing next to runners wearing 10-millimeter EVA-foam flats, as thin as slippers, and I thought, I cannot believe they’re going to beat themselves up on this hilly course wearing those little shoes, while I'm out here with all this protection and propulsion."For Heath, also an elite runner and U.S. Olympic Trials athlete, the benefits of that extra protection went beyond race day. As a professional runner, he’d endured a series of foot injuries and three surgeries in four years. During his recovery, he began wearing the Vaporfly simply to walk around Nike campus.“The carbon-fiber plate and the rocker and the propulsive geometry made my foot do less work, and then the extra cushion protected the hot spot,” he remembers. “It gave me hope that I would be able to run again.”

Now that the Vaporfly was out in the world, it was time to put it to the test.The project had originated with the audacious goal of achieving a sub-2-hour marathon, and with a shoe already showing incredible gains in speed, Nike was ready to see if its moonshot could land.

Going After Sub-2

The ambition became <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-introduces-breaking2" target="null">Breaking2</a>. On May 6, 2017, three of the world’s best marathoners lined up before dawn on a Formula One track in Monza, Italy, ready to see if they could break the elusive barrier.Nike had spent months <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/inside-look-at-nike-breaking2-project" target="null">obsessing over every detail</a>, from fueling, aerodynamics and pacing to the course itself. A team of 30 pacers stood ready to rotate in and out. At 5:45 a.m., they took off in pursuit of history.Two hours and 25 seconds later, Eliud Kipchoge crossed the finish line, just shy of a barrier that, only a few years earlier, experts had predicted might stand for decades.The 2-hour mark remained unbroken, but with Kipchoge’s performance, it was suddenly within reach.Nike was already working on the shoe that would take him the rest of the way.

The Final 25 Seconds

Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, Nike had begun working on the next generation of super shoes before Breaking2 even took place. As the Vaporfly prepared to make its public debut, designers and researchers were asking how they could push the new system further.For Guest, part of the answer lay in a technology that had been defining Nike for decades: Air. The team began exploring how the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-air-blueprint-pack-official-images" target="null">proprietary cushioning platform</a> could work in concert with the ZoomX foam and carbon-fiber plate, eventually developing a system of speed that placed two highly responsive Air Zoom units beneath the forefoot.Farina, who had helped study the biomechanics of the original Vaporfly, remembers the Alphafly beginning to take shape before runners had even fully grasped what its predecessor could do.“By the time the Vaporfly came out, the idea of the Alphafly already existed,” she says. “So in our minds, we were thinking, Oh, just wait. There’s even more coming.”Two years after Monza, Kipchoge was ready to try again. This time, he arrived with a prototype of Nike’s next-generation racing shoe on his feet, an early version of what would become the Alphafly Air Zoom NEXT%.On a tree-lined course in Vienna, Austria, thousands of spectators crowded the route as Kipchoge ran behind a rotating formation of pacers. For 26.2 miles, he maintained the blistering pace —&nbsp;an average of 4 minutes and 34 seconds per mile, or 2 minutes and 50 seconds per kilometer — required to break the 2-hour barrier.When he crossed the finish line, the clock read 1:59:40. The performance of the future had arrived more than a half century early.

For all the attention paid to the clock in Vienna, there was another, quieter sign of just how much marathon racing was changing.Heath, who was working closely with Kipchoge at the time, remembers talking with him the next morning when the marathon champion mentioned that he’d gone for a run. Heath was stunned —&nbsp;in Kipchoge’s previous 10 marathons, he’d never run the following day.“He told me it was the first time he ever felt like his body could run the day after a marathon,” Heath recalls. “And he did it the day after running 1:59:40.”

A Ripple Effect

During the next seven years, Nike continued building on their system of speed, refining the interplay between foam, Air and carbon-fiber plate across successive generations of the Vaporfly and Alphafly. The process has been relentlessly iterative.“Once we started seeing how big the effects could be, we created a model relating footwear properties to athlete outcomes, and it became a scientific playground of, ‘Wow, what are the limits? What can we make next?’” says Farina.

This work is only possible, she says, because Nike can connect what researchers are learning in the lab directly to the people creating the shoes, all under one roof at the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/lebron-james-innovation-center-nike-sport-research-lab" target="">LeBron James Innovation Center</a>. If her team wants to understand what would happen with a differently shaped plate or a precise change in stack height, for example, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/phil-mccartney-is-showing-what-innovation-means-inside-nike-now" target="null">they can ask for it</a>, have a prototype built, test it, and begin the cycle again within days. Those prototypes can then go directly to some of the world’s best athletes, allowing the team to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/how-nike-created-apex-and-its-next-prototypes-with-elite-athletes" target="">listen to their feedback</a>, learn from their experience, and continually refine the technology.The process is purposeful, reminds Matthew Nurse, who keeps the signed 2017 custom Vaporfly Elite that Eliud Kipchoge wore for Breaking2 on his desk. "We didn't accidentally stumble onto the solution for breaking the two-hour barrier, or any of our product advancements since," he says. "Our research and our work with our athletes has allowed us to deeply understand the interplay among all the footwear levers, and how they effect performance, comfort and injury risk. And that's helped us to pioneer, innovate and drive this industry."It's a leader's recipe for launching the next generation of racing footwear, already underway.

The Next Frontier

Ten years after rewriting the formula for marathon shoes, Nike is still discovering new ways to push the sport’s gain-making technology forward. Its latest leap, Nike Apex, delivers up to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/introducing-nike-apex-the-next-leap-in-marathon-speed" target="_blank">40 percent more energy return than the Alphafly 3</a>.For Dimoff, that pursuit is the through line that connects the audacious experiment that began more than a decade ago with whatever comes next.“Our job is to continue finding those edges,” she says. “To keep pushing into spaces where no one is going and really show the world what’s possible.”—

See the milestone models and technology updates that kept pushing the sport, and Nike, forward.

2026

Arriving in January 2027, Nike Apex introduces the first double-stacked Air Zoom units in a racing shoe, along with new ZoomX LT foam and a redesigned carbon-fiber Flyplate, all while weighing some 10 percent less than the Alphafly 3. The shoe is Nike’s current pinnacle expression of race-day innovation, created for marathon runners chasing every possible second.&nbsp;

Designers refined every component of the Nike Alphafly 4 to create a smoother, more efficient marathon experience. The result is a shoe that delivers 10 percent more energy return than its predecessor; is 5 percent lighter; and features a new Atomknit upper, ZoomX LT foam, updated Air Zoom units, a carbon-fiber Flyplate and a Fast Shot outsole.

2024

The Nike Vaporfly 4 blends the stability and softness of the Vaporfly 3, creating a finely tuned balance of support and propulsion. That’s born from an updated Nike Flyplate curvature, which helps unlock leverage from the foot and ankle, and energy return generated by ZoomX foam. It’s also boosted by the featherweight design, which is roughly 10 percent lighter than the Vaporfly 3 and 20 grams lighter than the original Vaporfly (2017).

For the first time, the Nike Alphafly 3 connected the heel and forefoot with one continuous bottom, offering varying foot-strike patterns a smoother heel-to-toe transition regardless of the runner’s pace. Dual Nike Air Zoom units in the forefoot cushion impact with the road and return energy to the runner, and a wider full-length carbon-fiber Flyplate delivers a propulsive, stable ride.

2023

The engine of the Nike ZoomX Vaporfly 3 remained the same as the Vaporfly 2, with the propulsive feel runners love from the pairing of a full-length carbon-fiber Flyplate and ZoomX midsole. The Vaporfly 3’s reductive midsole geometry featured a convex shape around the forefoot, providing a comfortable and stable ride throughout your transition with Nike’s most resilient foam.&nbsp;Graphic text on the midsole nodded to the number of Flyknit upper iterations the team tested (57), and the iconic drop Swoosh against the all-white silhouette paid homage to the first Vaporfly worn at Breaking2 in 2017.

2022

Additional foam was added under the Zoom Air pods in the forefoot of the Nike Air Zoom Alphafly Next% 2, offering more energy return and helping ensure a smooth transition from heel to forefoot as runners go through their stride. A slightly wider heel helped improve stability and transition through changes of pace. The upper featured Atomknit 2.0, engineered for containment in the forefoot, breathability above the toes and comfortable padding under the laces.

2021

The Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next% 2 kept the tried-and-true system of ZoomX midsole and carbon-fiber Flyplate to provide snappy responsiveness and fight fatigue.The Flyweave upper was updated with an even more breathable, flexible material to better the fit, and the shoe’s geometry and midsole composition mimicked its beloved predecessor.

2019

The Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next% introduced Vaporweave, an upper material construction that’s lighter than Nike Flyknit, breathable and — critically — absorbs far less water from sweat or rain, so it stays airy and dry over the course of a marathon. The shoe added 15 percent more Nike ZoomX foam in the midsole compared to the Vaporfly 4% and received a redesigned traction pattern (thanks to an ask from Eliud Kipchoge after he ran a very wet race in Berlin).&nbsp;

2017

The Zoom Vaporfly Elite began as a concept shoe individually tuned for Eliud Kipchoge, Lelisa Desisa and Zersenay Tadese to attempt Breaking2 in Monza, Italy, in 2017. Complementing the ZoomX foam and carbon-fiber Flyplate was a smooth-fitting, lightweight Nike Flyknit upper, which provided support and containment.

An early sample of the Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4%, the super shoe that changed the way marathon shoes were made. Until this point, conventional wisdom was that marathon shoes must be featherlight and low to the ground. The Vaporfly 4% challenged the norm and presented a new system: stacked, energy-returning foam and a propulsive carbon-fiber plate. When Nike first launched the model, researchers found it delivered an average of 4 percent improved running economy over the brand’s previous fastest marathon shoe, the Nike Zoom Streak 6.

Ten years ago, Nike set out to break a barrier many said was impossible. The shoe it built transformed running — and ushered in a new era of human potential.

Nike Running

Feature

A Decade of the Super Shoe: How Nike Redefined Speed

About Nike - Stories from Inside NIKE, Inc.

Speed is often measured as distance over time. When one thinks of Jacob Kiplimo, they probably think fast because of how he’s worked that equation: an Olympic bronze medal running a 10K in 27:43; a world record hitting 57:20 in the half-marathon; a blistering 2:00:28 for the marathon, the third fastest time ever. For Kiplimo, however, speed doesn’t come from seeing the right pixels on a stopwatch. After all, distance over time can’t measure the thousands of miles he's run during his 25 years.Instead, speed is defined by a childhood in rural Uganda trying to keep up with four older brothers. Speed is also defined by friendship through competition with Olympic gold medalist and compatriot Joshua Cheptegei, as each athlete seeks to bring pride to their country by breaking into the upper echelon of African running. Paradoxically, speed for Kiplimo is also defined by the slowness of a farm and the satisfaction of a meal that has been nurtured over months from root to spoon — similar to the quiet work that goes into a long-awaited breakthrough on the course.The at-times bashful Ugandan is likely fast because he also has a confident side, one that keeps him fearless and undeterred by failure. Yes, Kiplimo has had successes and setbacks, but we would not know which is which if we simply looked at race results. If the now-established running star simply measured himself by distance over time, he wouldn’t be able to push the impossible.Here, he speaks in his own words on what it means to compete for his country, the importance of slowing down, and how his partnership with Nike is helping him rewrite the record books.

Uganda is my country, and I’ll always love it. For me, it’s amazing representing it, especially going out there, performing well, and getting to wave the flag. When I’m competing all over the world, I always remember seeing people from Uganda too. I run with Uganda in my mind, but because I run alone, I have to always compete as Kiplimo.

Kiplimo takes Nike’s proprietary Baseline test at a recent visit to the Nike Sport Research Lab. Made up of five assessments, Baseline is as foundational as it sounds. The assessments are borrowed from the worlds of biomechanics, physical therapy and exercise science, and they can be completed in a matter of minutes.

Baseline tests include a 3D body scan, a foot scan, a barefoot pressure test, an ankle range-of-motion test and countermovement jumps. Considered together, the test results form the baseline of a person’s athletic profile — how powerful they are, how mobile they are, how explosive they are, and other traits.

Knowing these attributes gives Nike researchers, scientists and designers a clearer picture of how to serve an athlete’s needs.

I know I have the opportunity to achieve something truly special in my life. World Championships and Olympics are coming, and it’s my target to represent Uganda and achieve something that will bring pride to myself and my country.Especially in the Olympics, it would mean a lot to represent Uganda well. But I also need to focus on this year, and recovering and training the best I can, because I know I am always competing against the best, so I train always with the goal that I need to be the best.

When I broke the half-marathon record, I remember being so happy to see my name when I crossed the finish line. I knew it was a big achievement, and I knew I had done something special. In London, of course I thought I might be the one who would break the marathon record too — but I was still happy to see that it was broken and that I was able to break the previous record. Because seeing someone else win just means there is a new challenge. And that’s good — it motivates me.I remember the first time I tried the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/introducing-nike-apex-the-next-leap-in-marathon-speed" target="_blank">double-stacked Air bags in the Apex</a>. The cushioning was exactly what I needed. I started using it in my training runs, and I gave <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/how-nike-created-apex-and-its-next-prototypes-with-elite-athletes" target="_blank">my best feedback to Nike</a>, and they were able to build me a custom version. I used that prototype in London and I ran well, so I made sure the team knew that version was one to keep building on for future races.Farming is something that is very good for me. I train hard because I want to be the best during races, but farming allows me to slow down and recharge my mind and body to go out and train hard again. I mostly farm maize and sweet potato, which is especially good, because it allows me to fuel my body with healthy foods. Everything in my life is about going fast, so it is important for me to do something that keeps me focused on that priority and what I need to do, but also balances it.

I want to be known as someone who is disciplined and consistent in what I do. Of course, it feels good to be known at all and to have people cheer me on, but I want to be an inspiration. I want people to know me for how hard I work, and I want them to know that I seek out competition without fear.The marathon is the biggest race now, and that is why I want to keep mastering it. I started my transition to the marathon after the Olympics, and I can say that I am proud of how I have progressed this year, but I still have so much to learn. I’m still learning to get the most out of my training for this race. I don’t think I’m quite good yet, but in a year or two years, I think I can be very good at the marathon.

Hear from the elite distance runner on redefining endurance racing and helping to pioneer the next generation of running innovation.

For The Win

Record Breaker Jacob Kiplimo Is Ushering in a New Era of Speed

A summer sun is coming up over the Rift Valley as the runners begin to gather.In Eldoret, Kenya, on the roads and trails that have carried generations of world-class runners over clay, grass, rock and pavement, a group of nine athletes laces up for an early-morning session at the Lornah Kiplagat Sports Academy. By the time morning light reaches the track, the work is already underway.Huddled at the edge of the track is a team of Nike Running experts closely watching the athletes, who include some of sport’s top runners. Among them: Jacob Kiplimo, a half-marathon world-record breaker and Brigid Kosgei, an Olympian and marathon world-record setter.During the next few days in late July, these athletes — along with <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/eliud-kipchoge-wear-testing-nike-running-zoom-fly-6" target="null">Eliud Kipchoge</a>, the first man to run a sub 2-hour marathon distance, and <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/faith-kipyegon-profile" target="null">Faith Kipyegon</a>, the world’s fastest woman miler — will run in <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-debuts-a-race-day-system-of-speed-designed-for-every-runner" target="">shoes the rest of the world hasn’t yet seen</a>, testing prototypes; comparing them with previous versions; and sharing feedback with product, sports marketing and performance specialists who have traveled thousands of miles to hear what they have to say.

As the athletes try on the latest prototypes, they don’t mince words. They say what they think: what feels good and what doesn’t; where a shoe rubs or shifts; whether it’s too soft or too heavy; what they would change. It’s an openness that’s been built over time and with earned trust: These elite runners know the Nike team didn’t travel across two oceans and nearly 9,000 miles to collect compliments. They’re here for honest feedback, the kind that’s helped the brand push the limits of speed in racing footwear for decades. It is understood that what they say today will shape what they see the next time around — and that their insights will make the shoes better.

The Road to Chicago

For Kiplimo and Kosgei, the next time is coming soon. Both are preparing for the Chicago Marathon, and they’ll have Nike’s latest elite super shoe prototype. “These are our top athletes in the marathon,” says Chris Cook, Nike Development Director for Race and Track &amp; Field. “Jacob is our fastest male marathoner. Brigid is a former world-record holder. We want to make sure they have everything they need to perform at their best when it matters most.”During Kiplimo’s first fitting, the team brings out shoes he’s already raced in, including the pair he wore at the London Marathon earlier this year, to provide a baseline. He’d previously told Nike product specialists his foot sometimes moved inside the shoe around corners, so the designers were looking to improve the lockdown and make the shoe lighter without sacrificing bounce or cushioning.“We used this shoe as the starting point,” says Elliott Heath, Nike Running Lead for Sport Innovation Studio. “We knew what we had, and the goal was to make it better.”

By the time Kiplimo tries on the new prototypes, the team has already iterated on his feedback, using the London shoe as a jumping-off point for several new concepts. His task now is to narrow down what he could race in at Chicago.He works through several versions. One uses an experimental cushioning system he likes but says causes some irritation underfoot. Several others make the final cut, and the team sets them aside for the following morning’s workout.Kosgei goes through a similar process, trying her own versions of many of the same prototypes. She compares different weights, fits and constructions, looking for something lighter without giving up the stability and grip she needs, particularly on wet pavement. With several promising options, she elects to test all four.

Champion marathoner Eliud Kipchoge evaluates the Nike Apex, a racing shoe that delivers up to 40 percent more energy return than the Alphafly 3.

Unlike traditional racing shoes, Apex features zero-drop geometry with a 40-millimeter stack height in both the heel and forefoot, creating a balanced, supported ride.

The visible, double-stacked Air Zoom platform in the Nike Apex is designed to compress, store and return energy, creating a uniquely propulsive feeling.

New tech extends to the Nike Apex outsole, where GOATEK and Fast Shot provide strategically placed traction and durability.

The next morning, with prototypes in hand, Kiplimo and Kosgei head to the track. Kiplimo rotates through several configurations over a series of 1,000-meter repeats and 400s, while Kosgei cycles through all four options across 12 1,000-meter repeats. At nearby camps, the rest of the group does the same, swapping shoes and comparing notes with the Nike team between efforts.Later, during a one-on-one fitting with Kipchoge, the marathon champion tries a prototype he finds too wide and suggests removing some of the material. A Nike teammate reaches for another version.&nbsp;They’ve anticipated and made the change.That cycle — trying on shoes, running in them, offering feedback — continues throughout the week with the athletes, each round giving the Nike team a clearer picture of how the prototypes perform.

The Pursuit of Lighter

Arriving in Kenya with shoes this closely tuned to the athletes they serve starts long before anyone steps onto the track or road.Eric Grimberg, a Nike Principal Footwear Developer based in Korea, was with Kiplimo at the London Marathon earlier that year, where the team saw both what was working in his shoe and what they wanted to improve. He remembers the conversations that fueled the innovation.&nbsp;“The feedback was really good in some ways, but there was also room for improvement,” says Grimberg. “We immediately started talking about what we could do to make a more lightweight version.”The team looked at how they could strip out weight without losing the energy return that was making the shoe great, says Cook.

If they were going to achieve this, it would mean reworking virtually every element.&nbsp;They thinned the outsole, lowered the density of the foam, and reduced the thickness of the film surrounding the Air units. For the upper, they borrowed ultralight yarns developed for the spike Kipyegon wore during <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/magazine/faith-kipyegon-nike-breaking4-journey" target="null">Breaking4</a>, her attempt to become the first woman to run a mile in under 4 minutes.&nbsp;Together, the changes brought the prototype from roughly 176 grams to about 120, slicing nearly one third of the weight away, an incredible drop.Some of those changes had unexpected effects. Not only did the lower-density foam save weight, it made the shoe softer.“We were a little bit nervous about that initially,” says Cook.&nbsp;But the athletes loved it.“From the feedback we’ve gotten so far, that’s actually been perceived as a benefit, the fact that it’s a little bit cushier,” explains Cook.

Knowing the Athlete

That interplay between what the team can measure and what an athlete actually experiences is central to the development process. Stats are one thing, but how it feels is what matters.“Making performance products is always a balance of athlete feedback and testing in the lab,” explains Heath. “Ideally, those two things match up. If something is validated by the athletes, we try to amplify it even further. If it’s invalidated, we go back and understand why.”The longer Nike works with an athlete, says Cook, the more specific those conversations tend to become. As the team learns what the athlete needs, the athlete also learns what they want, and exactly how to articulate it.“When you meet with an athlete for the first time, the conversation may be very short: ‘Yeah, it’s good. Green’s nice. Good color,’” says Cook. “But after working together across multiple shoes, the athletes get much more in tune with the kinds of questions we’re asking.”

The Nike team has also learned how individual athletes describe what they feel, which questions get the most useful answers, and what matters most to each runner. Over time, those learnings can extend beyond the athlete or shoe they began with.Kiplimo’s own racing history is a testament to the process. The shoe he wore when he broke the half-marathon world record, for example, helped inform the new <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-alphafly-4-helps-more-runners-go-the-distance-with-speed-and-confidence" target="null">Alphafly 4</a>, carrying lessons from an elite racing shoe into a model that will reach runners more broadly.“What was the past for him will be the future for others,” says Heath.So too for the latest high-performing Nike prototypes hitting the red Kenyan dirt this summer. The eked-out benefits, born from the hours of listening and iterating, will soon be put to the test on race courses the world over, worn by the most elite, then, not long later, by any runner with the goal to find out what their fastest speed might be.

On high-altitude roads and running tracks in western Kenya, Eliud Kipchoge, Faith Kipyegon, Jacob Kiplimo, Brigid Kosgei and more elite athletes team with Nike experts to create products that can make the impossible possible.

How the World’s Fastest Runners Shaped Nike Apex — and the Brand’s Next Racing Shoes

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.

Making It

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

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

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

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?

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How We Partner With Athletes On New Prototypes

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Stories from inside NIKE, Inc.

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Basketball

Behind the Design of the Caitlin 1

Short Stories

For more than three decades, Air Max has been an iconic Nike platform, delivering distinct innovations and styles and the sensation of walking on air. It stands the test of time and continues to inspire Nike-only creations that both serve the athlete and drive Nike forward. But how do you renovate an icon? To disrupt the status quo and re-envision the future of Air Max, we developed a revolutionary new configuration of Air paired with a bold, sleek design: <a href="https://about.nike.com/en/newsroom/releases/nike-air-max-dn-official-images" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="ql-size-small">the Nike Air Max Dn</a>. Here, Nike Product Director Reggie Hunter gives an inside look into how the shoe was born — and the work it took to pull if off.It was 2021 and I was sitting in the parking lot of this huge fairgrounds lot way up in Washington state. I’d just gotten my first Covid vaccine, and my arm was still stinging when my phone rang.It was a close Nike teammate calling to talk about an innovation for Nike Air Max with an opportunity to change the trajectory of the line. The 15 minutes I was mandated to stay in place turned into 30 minutes, then 40, with the charged momentum of our conversation.We’d suddenly received a green light from senior Nike innovation leaders for a new Air Max direction, and they had big expectations. The marching orders were basically, “We need the next big thing. We’ll put the best team against it. Go figure it out and, oh yeah, you’ve got one year to pull it off instead of two or three, and you’re going to be working from home through Covid to do it.”You know what? I was energized by it. Any time you have all the leaders high up at Nike aligned and unlocking resources, it’s an exciting moment. And we were ready. We’d identified tons of opportunities for Air Max. The biggest challenge that we saw was, how can we do everything that we want to do? How can we really move the needle?

Taking Max Back to Its Roots

When you look back at where Air Max started in the late ’80s, the technology was usually a smaller, visible Air sole, encapsulated in foam. When Nike designed a “window” to this functional component, it created a new desire for shoes.That desire felt bottomless. By the early 2000s, demand for Air Max was skyrocketing. Nike had so much innovation and newness, and it was also the first time that retros were brought back with a level of consistency and depth. People gorged on Air Max. The trend was to go bigger and bigger with the Air soles, which meant that by the 2020s, some people started to complain that our shoes felt bulky, heavy, not really what you would expect Air to feel like. The figurative bubble was bursting. We knew that we needed to reset in a sharp, focused way and create new innovation that we could lead a new generation forward with.

For us, it meant going back to the roots of Air. I think what made Air Max originally so special was that it was developed for performance running, and those shoes felt responsive and were low to the ground. They looked fast, sleek, sophisticated. We wanted to revive this look and feel — and that was how the Nike Air Max Dn was born.In the Air Max Dn, you immediately notice the tubular Air language of the shoe, and that in itself is a revival; it first appeared in our Max shoes in the early 2000s, where it went below the radar at the time because people were really into the Air Max ’95s and ’97s. We’d seen a younger generation of versed sneakerheads who know their Nike history start to discover the old tubular styles again. And that was perfect, because we wanted to design a shoe for the new generation, give them a version of Air Max to call their own.

We started with a whole new system of Air. The Air Max Dn is our first dual-chamber, four-tubed Nike Air unit. The two chambers each have two tubes, and the back tubes are tuned to a higher pressure than the front, which helps propel you from heel strike to toe-off. That’s the “dynamic motion” in Dn — that the Air unit can interact with your foot pushing down on it and help fluidly transition you forward. Your body is the load that forces this response out of the bag.We knew we had to be just as bold, disruptive and innovative through the rest of the shoe and make sure each component complemented and reflected the dynamic motion of the Air unit. I think that really comes through in the upper material — the haptic, textured overlay looks fast and sleek, begs to be touched. It’s unexpected, and that’s what we wanted to get back to. Creating a new shoe language and aesthetic that moved away from the big bubble to a form that could push the edges and create a conversation. Because I think the worst thing that can happen for a shoe is that no one's talking about it.

Recreating a Feeling

I have always loved sneakers. Growing up, my parents spent a fixed amount of money on shoes, and that did not include anything that would give me street cred or shoes that I necessarily wanted. I had an older friend who got all the best shoes, and when he grew out of them, he handed them down to me.The first pair of shoes that I bought myself —&nbsp;with money from Christmas and doing errands around the house — were Nike Air Tech Challenge IVs from the Andre Agassi line. When I put them on, I thought, “These shoes are incredible and they’re gonna take me to places I haven’t been.” I was so proud to wear them.My passion for shoes led me to work at a boutique sneaker store in my small town in the UK from 14 until I was 23. The coolest part was discovering culture from all these older peers who were listening to new music, talking about films, and learning more about fashion and footwear from around the world. They’d take me on trips to London to go to Nike Town and see the best of the new offerings. That feeling of seeing something new, something covetable, something inspiring always stuck with me. It’s part of the reason I got into this job. There’s nothing like creating something that can instantly elicit an emotional and personal response.

This Max Is for You

I think back to that fairgrounds lot in 2021, ending the Air Max call, shaking off the shot in my arm, and I really had no idea of the work that was ahead. The Air Max Dn team joked early on about how many emails we would share about this project. I think the shoe took five times more work than we’d ever imagined.What makes it all worthwhile to me is imagining a kid picking up an Air Max Dn. I think back to pulling on those Agassi Challenges — the attitude and confidence, the feeling of possibility those shoes gave me. I want people to wear this shoe and feel those feelings. Feel the newness and freshness. Make it their own.That’s the ultimate goal, really: That I’ve helped create a shoe that could resonate, a shoe that could inspire someone and spark a new fascination with Nike sneakers. A shoe that will take you to places you haven’t been.

Dreaming up the revolutionary Air Max Dn took creativity, spark and guts. Nike Product Director Reggie Hunter tells the whole origin story.

“We Wanted to Create the Unexpected”

Menstruation. Period. Leaks. We’re comfortable saying the words, and our teams have obsessed how to help address the common problem — bleed-through — that periods can bring. Here, Lisa Gibson, Senior Project Manager in Apparel Innovation, describes helping to create the Leak Protection: Period short.

The project originated when our teams learned that by age 14, girls are dropping out of sport at twice the rate of boys. By age 17, a time in which most people have gone through puberty, 51 percent will have dropped out of sport. And one of the critical components of that is menstruation. We wanted to create a product that would help give people peace of mind and confidence to play their sport, do their movement.We didn’t want to just call it “the period short.” We wanted to have a cool internal code name. Someone suggested TMI. And we were like, no, that’s not sitting right. It’s not “too much information” — it’s FYI, "for your information." And that code name truly embodied our mission of creating a future where menstruation is celebrated and not shamed.Fear of bleed-through is real. It’s not just through the teen years. It is through the entire adventure with menstruation, which can be a 40-year journey. I still have fear of bleed-through here at work. Hopefully we can be the catalyst for change that even if you do bleed through, there is no embarrassment. And in the meantime, until we get to that future state of normalizing menstruation and bleed-through, we have created a product that people will love and that will give them assurance and confidence.

There was a lady that had been collecting her menstrual fluid and she had written “shameless” on her leg with it — I found that picture when we were kicking off the project and I was just trying to pull together images for a deck. That resonated so strongly with me because I truly believe that we should feel no shame — no shame if we bleed through, no shame for menstruating. And that’s what I hope the younger generations take from this, and hopefully the older generations as well, that we can talk more openly about bleeding. I hope we can help be a catalyst for that, get to a world where menstruation is celebrated like motherhood is.We tested with synthetic blood. Because we couldn’t just test with water. We needed to make sure that the fluid we were testing with was representative of menstrual fluid and the viscosity was correct — it played a crucial role in understanding how the material was performing and making sure that there was no bleed-through. We spent so much time ensuring we had the right liquid for testing. We had to dial that in perfectly.We’re always trying to learn about athlete pain points, struggles in daily life and how we can make a product that will meaningfully change people’s lives, whether it is people who bleed, whether it is people who need more support with chest tissue when running or playing basketball or whatever it is. We always come back to, what is the athlete telling us? Whatever we’re testing and validating, we’re always gut-checking ourselves against, is this making a meaningful difference to those people? That’s what we do. That’s what’s most important in innovation. It’s what’s most important at Nike. And that is literally what puts a smile on my face before I go to bed at night, knowing that we can truly impact people’s lives in this incredibly positive way.

Nike Senior Project Manager in Apparel Innovation, Lisa Gibson, on helping to create the Leak Protection: Period short.

“This Is a Product That Can Change People’s Lives”

By <a href="https://www.adamfbradley.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="ql-size-small">Adam Bradley</a>What does 50 years of Nike sound like? Footfalls on polyurethane tracks. The echoed pop of optic yellow balls against nylon strings. The squeak of rubber soles on polished courts. Above all, though, Nike sounds like its athletes. In the early years, you could pick out each voice: Steve Prefontaine, Joan Benoit Samuelson, George “The Iceman” Gervin. As the decades went by, the voices grew louder, more varied: John McEnroe, Bo Jackson, Michael Jeffrey Jordan. Then Tiger, Serena, LeBron. Ronaldo, Mbappe, Naomi. With each passing decade, the chorus builds until their voices harmonize, united and distinct.&nbsp;Nike listens. As John Slusher, the company’s Executive Vice President for Global Sports Marketing, says, “Listening to the voice of the athlete is so crucial to us.” Slusher and his team spend a great deal of time responding to — even anticipating — athletes’ needs. A rising WNBA star like Sabrina Ionescu might require different things than an 18-year veteran like Diana Taurasi. Maybe it’s business mentoring or a visit to the Sports Research Lab for a custom shoe fitting. Most any athlete will appreciate a therapeutic massage, but for a 10,000-meter runner like Shalane Flanagan, a mid-heat massage could mean that one-second difference between qualifying for the final or going home.

Yes, Nike listens. And with listening comes learning: how to enhance performance, how to build a better business, how to respond to what the moment demands. With learning comes growth: improving not only products but also practices, supporting athletes as they take stands for social justice, centering the voices of women in sports and in business.&nbsp;With growth comes commitment, born of deep investment into the people and the principles that define the company. And with that commitment comes a familial bond between Nike and its athletes. Slusher often stresses himself out while watching major sporting events. Why? “If it’s two Nike teams or Nike athletes on opposing sides,” he says, “I practically have to look away. Nike in general, and our teams — we love our athletes, we love our sports.”Over the years, Nike’s athletes have reciprocated that commitment. After a birthday celebration that stretched well into the next morning, the New York Yankees’ legend Derek Jeter showed up for an event with key Nike retailers because he knew it mattered to the company. Then there was Kobe Bryant, whom Slusher recalls having attended 92 Nike events in a single calendar year when he was obligated to attend only eight.&nbsp;Perhaps this is what people have in mind when they talk about the Nike Family. Perhaps it’s why major sporting events often take on the spirit of a family reunion, with elders welcoming younger athletes into the fold. During a long weekend in February, for instance, some of Nike’s football legends took time to record welcome messages for the brand’s newest endorsement partners, young athletes, some just out of college, for whom a personal message from football legends Barry Sanders or Jerry Rice must seem like a dream. At Nike, such dreams are often the beginning of others.&nbsp;“We view our athletes as part of the Nike family, and we want to help them succeed,” says Slusher. It’s a common metaphor in business, often invoked but rarely achieved. Corporate cultures are quick to embrace the warm and fuzzy feelings of togetherness while skipping over the responsibilities that being in a family requires. But as Barry Sanders explains, “Nike has figured something out. They don’t just support athletes in their respective sports, they support them whatever their interests are off the field. They have established great partnerships and relationships with athletes.” Jerry Rice picks up the thread. Yes, Nike champions you as an athlete, he explains, but really, it’s a matter of reciprocity: “When everything’s working the way that it should, and you know that they’ve got your back and you’ve got their back,” says Rice, “it’s just a perfect relationship.”Alex Morgan’s own Nike journey exemplifies the spirit of family in Sanders’ and Rice’s words. When Morgan was 7 years old, she and two neighborhood friends founded their own Nike club. They met in the backyard of the Morgan family home in Diamond Bar, California, in a white shed adorned with Swooshes the girls had scrawled on the walls by hand. “We tried our best to draw the perfect Nike logo,” Morgan recalls. “From then on, I was a huge fan of Nike.” Following a standout collegiate soccer career, Morgan turned pro and soon joined the Nike family. “It was a dream come true to sign my first endorsement deal with Nike,” she says, which she did in 2011. “And we’ve been on this long, amazing journey since.” That journey has taken Morgan to two World Cup victories, an Olympic gold medal and a legendary club career.But her fondest memory as a Nike athlete came off the pitch. In 2019, Morgan stepped away from competition while pregnant with her first child. In a fortuitous bit of timing, that same year Nike launched its maternity collection. “I got one of the very first prototypes,” she says. Wearing her new Nike gear, she could stay active and comfortable in clothes that made her feel confident and strong. “Just to feel supported — not only on the field but as a mom-to-be — that felt really good,” she recalls. Now, she and her toddler son sport matching Jordans. The Nike family grows.

In a rare interview, given to the Harvard Business Review back in 1992, Nike’s founder, Phil Knight, now 86, explained what the company looks for in its partners. “The trick is to get athletes who not only can win but can stir up emotion,” he said. Look across the decades, and you’ll see that Nike has consistently achieved just that. From Andre Agassi to Charles Barkley, Emma Raducanu to Ja Morant. Once they’ve found those athletes, Nike looks to grow with them. “We take the time to understand our athletes, and we have to build long-term relationships with them,” explained Knight. “Those relationships go beyond any financial transactions. John McEnroe and Joan Benoit wear our shoes every day, but it’s not the contract. We like them, and they like us. We win their hearts as well as their feet.”Winning hearts and feet is a good summation of the Nike ethos. It’s been true from the beginning, when the spirit of Nike was no more than a coach and an athlete: Knight and his University of Oregon coach Bill Bowerman. Though much has evolved about the company — and the landscape of sports — over half a century, that much has stayed the same. “For all the changes,” says Slusher, “we also started with the best athletes with the best stories wearing the best product and winning. It was in the trunk of Phil’s car: Get the guy who’s gonna win the marathon to wear your shoes. And in some ways, it’s the same thing today. Of course, it’s a lot broader and more complex, but we’re still partnering with those great athletes and helping them to achieve their best.”And the company memorializes those close relationships to athletes on its sprawling Beaverton, Oregon, campus by naming its buildings after its greatest stars. “The buildings are named after the men and women who have given us more than their names and endorsements,” explained Knight in his 2016 memoir, Shoe Dog. “Joan Benoit Samuelson, Ken Griffey Jr., Mia Hamm, Tiger Woods, Dan Fouts, Jerry Rice, Steve Prefontaine — they’ve given us our identity.”“Naming buildings after athletes — that’s an incredible thing,” says John McEnroe, who has his own building on campus and is Nike’s longest-tenured athlete partner at 44 years and counting, having won seven grand slam titles over the course of his career. The tennis champ’s longstanding relationship with Nike is a testament to a defining difference in how the company thinks about its endorsers. Perhaps not even Knight knows the exact number of athletes that have been part of Nike’s journey over these 50 years. At any given time, the company maintains close to 16,000 relationships with athletes and organizations across the globe. Forbes recently reported that of the top 100 highest earning athletes, more than half were part of the Nike family. Nike is a brand of champions.

You could write the history of Nike’s first 50 years through its heritage of champions, individuals whose commitment to excellence has helped them achieve the highest recognition in their sport. LeBron James and Serena Williams, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Naomi Osaka, Rafa Nadal and Sam Kerr, and so many more. Here, “champion” is a noun, a word that memorializes past performance. As a company, Nike embraces the verb, dedicating itself to actively supporting the cause of its athletes. In his letter commemorating Nike’s golden anniversary, Knight put words to this belief: “From Day One,” he wrote, “everything we did — and still do — is to unleash the potential of every athlete around the world.”How do you champion a champion? Ask three-time Super Bowl champ Jerry Rice and he’ll tell you. It starts, he says, with the best — and the best-looking — equipment. “It’s all the swag! Having that Nike Swoosh on there,” he says, while wearing a Nike T-shirt, Swoosh across the chest. “I remember having to tape my shoes a certain way to make sure that logo stood out. Just to have that logo on there, I knew I was gonna do something special on that day.”When asked what they’d preserve for a time capsule commemorating Nike’s 50th, several athletes mention the iconic late ’80s, early ’90s advertising campaigns starring Michael Jordan, and more specifically, the 1989 Spike Lee-directed ad starring Lee as Mars Blackmon, with its indelible refrain, “It’s gotta be the shoes!”The phrase still resonates. On a recent visit to the Nike campus, the reigning NBA champion Giannis Antetokounmpo was asked what he thinks about when he thinks about Nike. His response was immediate. “Shoes. And, specifically, free shoes! The ones I get at my house,” he said, flashing a mischievous grin familiar to those who know the playful personality of one of the most competitive athletes on the face of the earth. Just as quick, he shifts to a tone of sincerity and thoughtfulness. What does Nike bring to mind? “The culture they’ve built over the years,” he says. “When I think about Nike, I think about the athletes that have been a part of Nike’s journey.”

Barry Sanders played a big part in Nike’s journey, and Nike played a big part in his. Throughout his career, Sanders was generous with his teammates, gifting his linemen Rolex watches and big-screen TVs, but frugal when it came to himself. Off the field, you’d likely find him head to toe in Nike-issued gear. Why pay for clothes when Nike gave them to you for free? And besides, wearing the Swoosh was a source of pride. “It was a seal of approval,” says Sanders today, thinking back on his decision to sign with Nike. “I’m one of those guys.”Historically, a lot of those “guys” have been women, and Nike continues to build on its commitment to women’s sports and to enhance its focus on women consumers. “With Nike, it’s been great to be able to brainstorm together and be in meeting rooms with people who actually do have a future plan,” says Alex Morgan. “It’s great to hear the athlete’s perspective and where the athlete feels their contributions can be the most authentic.” Earlier this year, Nike formalized that informal practice of consulting athletes when it inaugurated its Athlete Think Tank, aimed at investing in the future of women’s sport. Among its 13 founding members is Serena Williams, who brings her vision and advocacy to this vital work. “I think Nike has probably learned a lot from working with me and my team,” says Williams. “I think I have helped teach them how to be nimbler and more spontaneous.” Of course, she’s learned from Nike too: how to chart long-term goals, how to plan for success. Paula Badosa, the 26-year-old Spanish tennis star, is half as old as Nike, but she understands this ethos. “Our dreams as athletes become their dreams,” she says.&nbsp;The athlete’s voice resounds.

The voice itself is an athlete. We hear its sound because of the conscious and unconscious coordination of lungs and abdominal muscles, vocal folds and larynx, tongue and teeth. It should come as no surprise, then, that people who have dedicated their lives to training their bodies to achieve peak performance would have strong voices too. A’ja Wilson, a collegiate champion, WNBA MVP and three-time All Star, all before the age of 26, understands her greatest role as being “a voice for the voiceless,” she says. In the months after the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman from Louisville, Kentucky, who was killed during a no-knock raid on her apartment, Wilson used the platform she earned through her athletic achievement to speak out. Addressing the media on September 24, 2020, before her Las Vegas Aces faced off in game three of their semifinal series against the Connecticut Sun, a day after learning that none of the officers involved in Taylor’s death would face charges, Wilson raised her voice in the spirit of her convictions. “Black Lives Matter isn’t this big thing that’s taking money,” she said. “It is a statement. It is a life that I live. I am a Black woman. You take everything that I have earned away from me, and I am a Black woman.”Wilson knows that Nike supports her and her freedom of self-expression. More than that, she understands that Nike gives her a means of amplifying her voice so that it reaches farther, resonates deeper. “Nike does an amazing job of helping us tell our stories the way that we want them to be told,” she says. “Just be you and they will make it work. I appreciate that, and I’m sure other athletes do as well.”

Nike believes that everyone is an athlete.* That’s not empty rhetoric, but a guiding reality. It speaks both to the company’s grand commercial ambitions, of course, but more profoundly, it testifies to a vision of service that aims to reach everyone. I ask my two daughters, who are 8 and 11 years old, what wearing the Swoosh means to them, and they sound a lot like Nike’s athletes. It makes them feel faster, more confident. It just feels comfortable. “Dad,” my older daughter says to me, barely restraining her exasperation, “it’s just cool.” Jerry Rice and Mia Hamm and Ada Hegerberg and Eliud Kipchoge all agree: Fifty looks good on Nike.Nike’s slogan for its golden anniversary is succinct and aspirational: “Never Done.” In this regard, it is similar to the brand’s most famous tagline, “Just Do It.” John McEnroe recalls a Nike executive trying out that iconic phrase on him more than 30 years ago. “It’s horrible! It’ll never work,” he says. “It’s safe to say I was wrong about that one,” McEnroe admits with a wry shake of the head. I try the new slogan out on him now and he nods. “That’s good,” he says. “Because that would lead me to believe that after this 50 years, Nike wants to be around for 50 more.”

We are dedicated to supporting and serving our Nike athletes. This is what 50 years of actively listening sounds like.

The Athlete’s Voice

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.