The best race shoes for runners used to be the simplest shoes available. Brands would strip their racing shoes down to the essential parts to make them as light as possible to avoid weighing runners down.
This all changed with the arrival of carbon plate running shoes, spearheaded by the launch of the Nike Vaporfly 4% in 2017. Now racing shoes are characterized by high stacks of soft midsole foams with carbon plates embedded in that foam. They couldn’t look less like the racing flats of old.
