Josh Kerr Broke the World Record in the Mile. His Custom Shoes Were Designed to Be a ‘Weapon’
When Josh Kerr announced his intention to break the iconic 27-year-old world record in the mile earlier this year, he wasn’t going it alone.
The 28-year-old Scottish middle distance runner approached the challenge with the full support of his sponsor, Brooks Running, and its product innovation team in an effort to shave more than two seconds from his personal best to break the 3:43.13 standard set by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco in 1999.
They went one better, as Kerr improved his best mark from 3:45.34 to an astounding 3:42.66 to capture the record and win the London Diamond League meeting by more than three seconds over rival Yared Nuguse of the United States.
Brooks supported Project 222, named for the number of seconds required to best El Guerrouj’s time, with a specialty speed suit and racing spike designed for Kerr’s exact specifications and the exact demands of 55-second quarter-miles, which is world-record pace.
GLYN KIRK//Getty Images
Josh Kerr broke the mile world record in a custom spike, the Brooks Hyperion 222, and a custom Brooks speedsuit.
In an interview with Popular Science, Brooks senior director of product development Danny Orr described how the custom spike, the Hyperion 222, was engineered for a fast, sustained race at world-record pace with no gear changes or kick at the end—the opposite of how 1500-meter races typically play out in major races.
“The notion of running slowly, or the notion of changing gears or speeding up, they’re going to feel awful in this shoe,” he says. “It’s just not designed to do that. It really is a weapon for him to run four laps at a really high speed and a really high cadence.”
The shoe, designed for a single race, features a dramatic rocker shape that Orr says is designed to make it seem as if he is running downhill. As a relatively heavier runner with a larger foot and more leg strength than most of his competitors in the mile and 1500 meters, the carbon fiber plate is designed for maximum stiffness. The traction at the bottom of the shoe features permanent titanium pins, which are custom-fit and unavailable in mass-market spikes.
“His ability to generate force is higher than a lot of other people that we would work with in this space,” Orr says. “The spike is much stiffer than anything that we’ve ever made before.”
Andrew Maguire
The custom Brooks spike was approved by World Athletics for competition just last week.
Even with custom specifications, the shoe had to meet requirements from World Athletics in order to be eligible for competition and was approved by the sport’s governing body earlier this month.
The speed suit was custom-built for London’s warm July weather, featuring two-fabric construction balancing aerodynamics and breathability, laser-cut perforations to release heat and humidity, minimal seams, and moisture-wicking panels.
The Project 222 marketing campaign from Brooks bore some similarities with Nike’s Breaking2 and Sub4 campaigns in recent years for Eliud Kipchoge and Faith Kipyegon in their respective quests to break two hours in the marathon and four minutes in the mile. While Kipyegon finished off-target, Kipchoge succeeded in surpassing the sub-two-hour barrier over 26.2 miles, albeit with shoe technology and drafting and pacing tactics that made his time not eligible for or recognized as a world record.
Johanna Gretschel is a freelance writer and broadcaster living in Austin, Texas, who has covered elite track and field and running in all its forms. She contributes to Runner’s World, ESPN, Austin American-Statesman, FloTrack, MileSplit, Women’s Running and Podium Runner. Yes, she has run a marathon!
