I say we can just end the thread and buy these eye wateringly expensive new S-Works Ares 2. Omg the marketing claims. 
A shoe that improves your lactate threshold! AND makes you faster because you FEEL faster. Itâs literally a shoe that Roglic says makes your bike âjumpâ! All that for ONLY ÂŁ479!
The only buzzword missing from that article was âAIââŚ.and just pathetic âjournalismâ from road.cc.
There is plenty of new tech to help explain the price premium, which weâll dig into further down the page
No, there really isnât. They literally mentioned no ânew techâ further down the page. They just spewed out Specializedâs PR points.
But when has Specialized ever restrained themselves from blowing their own horn? Their promised benefits from âa shoeâ would make Rube Goldberg blush. I also have their incredible invention that the summarily abandoned: The Future Shock Stem. I have what was called a Gen 0.5, and the dealer couldnât get any information from Specialized and what they did get was either for the original version, or the next version, so they were stunned and apparently pissed off someone there as they were, likely coincidentally, dropped as a dealer. They left with mixed feelings Iâm sure. They were talking about all the âissuesâ they had with Specialized, mainly support issues.
And who is going to stomp on such outrageous claims now? I wonder what the mechanism that would increase a legâs power output? Can someone still walk on that shoe? 
And yet someone trotted out the asperger victim ChatGPT to come up with a way to test shoes. AI is the biggest ghost product in software in decades! Time after time âAIâ has been proven to be of highly questionable value for use in anything. It may get better, but at what cost. Reports of AI attacking various parts of government/society, AI giving out ideas to take out vital parts of society, etc⌠And oh boy, they want to use AI to run the US government. 
AI is THE shiny sticker corporations are using to call attention to their inept designed/engineered turd. 
Itâs GREAT!! It has AI!!
No, but apparently they help Tadej jump!
Primoz. 
Even if it had springs in them it would be a HUGE JOKE!!!
Oops!
MehâŚhard to keep those Slovenians straight.
So I have the Ares 1 and the tech is the exact same. Specalized have had varus wedges, insoles and metatarsal bumps for at least 10 years (they also say Retul scans everytime they make a shoe). I find varus wedges suit me so I like them, not everyone does though.
And it is a shame as the Ares 2 should be a good shoe, wide toe box but able to be tightened up at the heel and the top of the foot without being uncomfortable. It is exactly what I want from a shoe. We donât need this hyperbolic marketing and ridiculous price though. Itâs just a better fitting Torch (having not tried them on yet so I could be wrong). At least a white paper would be nice.
I still havenât stopped laughing at âSpecialized clarifies that the wattage gain (presumably over the previous Ares shoe) is due to âimproved lactate thresholdâ because the shoes have better footbeds, cleat position and internal wedges.â (bolding is mine)
No thatâs not what Im saying. You can measure the deflection of the shoe sole using a strain meter and also measure the force output with the power meter pedals they already have. From that you can calculate the hysteresis of the shoe sole and subsequently power loss. You donât need to measure force input into the shoe so you can have any rider do this (no fake leg or foot). Thats the advantage with my proposal.
Measuring O2 consumption is too indirect to get better than a couple watts ( double digits seems more likely). And temp rise is tough to control for outside influences. There is a reason power meters dont measure temp rise to determine power output.
Overall this is an interesting problem and having a method that can give quantitative results is a fun challenge.
Your proposal boils down to using two power meters (not a criticism, just saying). When you measure the deflection of the sole, you could also infer the force applied to it. For small deflections the relation between strain and stress is linear. Itâd be trickier as Youngâs modulus will depend on the location on the sole, etc.
Independently of how you do it, I reckon this problem will be very hard in practical terms as I expect the losses to be very small. Ordinary power meters have an accuracy of 1â2 %, which limits what effects you can actually measure.
The losses should be small. Does anyone know? But irregardless, carbon soles provide stability and incredible support. For people that put out smaller watts, no massive regular peaks, a plastic or nylon shoe is probably going to be fine (if they donât flex the sole/shoe).
I, when I posted their video, thought they could be using it to influence the high end shoe market. By declaring âthey were the sameâ, many buyers could/would be dissuaded from buying higher end (carbon) shoes. Why GCN would be trying to influence the shoe market is a topic of interest on its own. If people are buying carbon shoes to âlook proâ, they are possibly wasting their money. Why would GCN care. How could GCN, and their hired lab, totally miss the idea that they were not measuring REALITY, that they were not even close to proving anything. It couldnât look worse for GCN, their journalists, and their management. How did this happen, and what were they hoping to influence by releasing it. A post mortem would help⌠
That and in my experience they do a better job at avoiding hotspots. Thatâs a comfort thing, and as such could lead to better performance. But then the argument would be more comfortable shoe ==> better performance, but since stiffer â more comfortable, it still wouldnât work.
Maybe they got caught in a corner. Typically, they do advertainment/infotainment stuff, i. e. they have a sponsor with new product X and they should make an entertaining video about it. Perhaps Pirelli sponsors a video and wants them to showcase their new 40 mm road tires. So they do a test where they âscientificallyâ compare how fast/slow the 30 mm, 35 mm and 40 mm versions are. It doesnât matter which tire wins as long as Pirelli tires are featured.
Now they have tried to something really scientific and the expectation they set themselves is that the comparison should be scientific. Only to find out that this requires much more thought, care and capability than GCN had at its disposal.
The weird bit is that no one working at the wind tunnel at Silverstone , which youâd think might require a physics degree, noticed they were totally wasting their time 
But maybe they did, and either didnât bring it up (horrible for them), or were ignored by GCN (horrible for them). There is enough to go around to embarrass everyone, but in the end the facility they used could just say âWe warned them, and they wanted to continueâ.
Running a business, I remember when our accountant inserted a disclaimer (CTA) note that the data used in these included documents are derived from information provided by our client. We make no representation to their accuracyâ. But, um, they combed through our records every quarter. If there was anything wrong, they would have discovered it Iâm sure. So if they thought they could hide behind that statement, itâs not at all likely to stick. Sure, âgarbage in, garbage outâ but they went through the container and pulled it all out. But anywayâŚ
This has been, on one level, rather hysterical. And it took them how long to retract it?
Party on!!
Just my 2c on this topic :
I use carbon soles because of comfort. Plastic soles give me hotspots both in XC and road setups. For power losses to occur one would have to effectively compress the sole material (I just donât see this happening) or cause some bending of the sole when pedaling (ok, maybe if one uses a very rearward cleat position, bridging between the ball of the foot and the heel).
I have very low expectations for GCN âtestsâ, but, like others mentioned, my biggest question mark here is how Silverstone let this one go through. They either didnât spot the protocol error (awful), or didnât care at all about what GCN was doing and provided no guidance (bad) or knew about the problem but still let GCN publish their content (bad). I donât see any scenario in which Silverstone comes out of this in good light.
because some people were mentioning AI here, just for fun I suggested to ChatGPT their test protocol and their objective. The systems first answer to the prompt was positive. With a second prompt I questioned it if the protocol would indeed work since the first power meter was after the sole. ChatGPT proceeded to give me a comprehensive answer on how that wouldnât work and suggested some different test setups. So AI is not really there yet but very close
I like GCN, and I really miss GCN+, but their notion of âtestingâ is laughable. Itâs a shame, because they do tackle some interesting questions. With only a tiny bit more effort, they could be providing some useful information.
Yeah, itâs bad enough now that if people put them in charge of anything that can hurt people, there will be people getting hurt. The early AI generated images were some level far removed from laughable. Whatâs worse than horrific?
The problem with AI is that there are people that are so out there, they will ride AI into a wall, turn it around, and keep going, and thatâs the problem. Stephen Hawking was right, AI IS a clear and present danger to humanity because most of the people that seem so dead set that it is THE answer are so âdamagedâ, and could be argued arenât really human, or humane. shrug And like programming in general, the product is only as good as the people that created and âtaughtâ it. If you arenât at least concerned about AI displacing human beings yet, just wait.
And there already is a company named SkyNet. They arenât in AI. Yet⌠