If you’ve been in disbelief watching the track events in the Paris Olympics, you aren’t alone. The performances have seemed almost superhuman, with new record times and dramatic come-from-behind victories. But super speed is not unique to this Olympics.
At the U.S. Olympic Team Trials earlier this summer, 33 track athletes achieved personal bests, including Heather Maclean of Peabody. Her times in the 1500-meter race had steadily increased from the first round to the semifinals to the finals, when she earned a time of 3:58:31. Had it been a few years ago, that time would have been fast enough to land her in the Summer Games. But this year, six other runners clocked in even faster times.
“It’s crazy running the best race of my life — and it was at the top in the U.S. the last two years — but this year, it was only good for seventh,” said Maclean, who represented the U.S. at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
The Peabody athlete said she had mixed feelings about the experience: proud of her time, upset not to make the team, and also a little bit of relief.
“It can be pretty exhausting at the end of it all,” she said. “After I finished the race and didn’t make the team I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what a relief it’s over.’”
Maclean’s experience reflects that of so many other track athletes around the world as they try to keep up with ever-faster times. Athletes, coaches and scientists say the constant record-breaking demonstrates that runners are faster than they’ve ever been, due to a combination of improved shoe technology, more intense training and greater knowledge about what helps the human body run faster.
Texas Christian University human locomotion professor Peter Weyand said that before 2000, the scientific understanding of what makes a runner “fast” was unclear. Many experts believed that some people were simply born faster than others.
But Weyand’s research and other studies have showed that speed depends on the amount of force someone puts on the ground as they’re running. That’s led coaches and runners to focus more on weight training and muscle strengthening.
“If you talk to the head coaches, they all know that force in relation to body weight is the secret sauce for these sprinters,” Weyand said. “That’s what they’re trying to train, and now there’s a wide variety of methods to try to accomplish that.”
It doesn’t hurt that shoes are a lot better for the body than ever before.
Weyand said thicker midsoles give people more spring. In recent years, studies have shown that “super shoes” with energy-absorbing lightweight foam and a carbon-fiber plate can make running more efficient, helping keep people’s heart rates lower and reduce their oxygen consumption. Recent findings show these shoes can amplify running speed, with wearers seeing improvements of approximately 2%.
“Everyone is wearing them, and you’re at a disadvantage if you’re not using one,” said Maclean, who races in New Balance’s MD-X V3s.
Athletes aren’t just racing in these shoes. According to Mark Coognan, a New Balance track coach based in Boston, incorporating them into everyday training has allowed runners to train harder, and more often.
“You couldn’t do that in the old days without the new shoes,” Coognan said.
Other factors could be contributing to record-fast times at the Paris Olympics, including a strategically designed track at the stadium, which has rubber that experts say may help minimize energy loss. Some athletes are also relying on new supplements that enable high intensity efforts for longer periods.
Maclean said that in the coming years, there’s no doubt there will be more improvements to shoes and supplements, leading to more personal bests and shattered records. But for now, she’s concentrating on feeling her best and racing alongside top runners in the world who may not have made the Paris Games.
And with her own new personal best in the 1500-meter race, the former Olympian is optimistic about her future.
“My time will come again. It has come before,” she said. “I feel like I have a lot more to give in the sport, so I’m just excited to keep getting better.”
