It is said that only 2% of all runners who cross the marathon finish line are able to do so in under 3 hours. It's the hallowed goal... An effort demanding not only full physical commitment, but also serious mental application.
"You can prepare yourself physically and put the training in, but at the end of the day you also have to have the mental strength and ability to put the pain aside and push towards your goal," says David Fick, who recently joined the sub-3 club after a buildup of 88 days, featuring some 1121km’s of running and 5495 minutes spent on his legs.
What did he run in? The the METASPEED™ Sky
Here is his take on the shoe:
The shoe of dreams! The Asics team was kind enough to send me a pair of these Carbon fibre angels and it was honestly love at first sight. I received the shoes two weeks before my marathon and wasted little time in breaking them in. Let me just say, the first run was something out of this world!
It was like I was running on a cloud being propelled forward with almost little to no effort.
In fact, my very first run in them was a recovery run which ended up being an average pace of 4:25km with a heart rate of 133 bpm. All my other recovery runs averaged a pace of around 4:40 and a heart rate of 139bpm. So, technically speaking the METASPEED SKY increased my pace but lowered my heart rate. Faster speed with less effort = game changer in my book.
On the day, the shoes performed like a dream. I truly believed they helped me in the final 10kms or so with maintaining a consistent speed when I had very little left to give.
All-in-all the shoes helped me average a pace of 4:06km and a heart rate of 153bpm. I don’t think the stats would have been so kind in any other shoe.
