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On July 7, 1999, Hicham El Guerrouj crossed the finish line at the Olympic Stadium in Rome to set a time of 3:43.13 for one mile. No one has run a mile faster in the 27 years since. Only one other person, Noah Ngeny, who finished second in that same race, ever came within a second of the mark. On Saturday, Scottish middle distance star Josh Kerr plans to break the record in front of an estimated 60,000 fans at the London Diamond League meet.
He announced the attempt in March and gave it a name: Project 222, a reference to the 222 seconds it takes to run 3:42 miles. Kerr has been open about why he believes a 27-year-old record is finally within his reach. The tracks are faster and aerodynamics are better understood than in 1999, and racing footwear has changed almost completely. Brooks, who has sponsored Kerr since 2018, spent the last five months building her a unique spike called the Hyperion 222, as well as a custom speed suit, both designed to run at exactly one pace. I spoke with Danny Orr, senior director of product development at Brooks, about how a shoe is built for a single race.
Three careful turns and one kick will not be enough.
Kerr won her 2023 world title in the 1,500 meters, as is typically won in championship races. “You go around for three laps, keep everyone in your line of sight, know what’s going on, and then the last lap is very fast, and people tend to win that way,” Orr says. “But you’re never going to break a world record that way.”
A record attempt starts at full speed and stays that way until the finish line. It involves four laps of approximately 55 seconds each, with no tactical slides or approaches. That one difference dictated almost all the design decisions on the pickaxe. “The notion of running slowly, or the notion of shifting gears or accelerating, will be horrible for you in this shoe. It’s just not designed to do that,” Orr says. “It’s really a weapon for him to run four laps at a really high speed and a really high cadence.”
Orr’s team started with data Brooks has collected on Kerr for eight years, including high-speed videos, pressure data and VO2 tests performed on the track. From there, the designers applied the details of this particular event: the expected temperature in London, the target cadence, and the pace you should maintain from the first step.
A sole shaped like a bicycle tire.
The geometry is the part that a casual observer would notice first. “The midsole and outsole of this shoe are a little bit shaped like the bottom of a bicycle tire, in the sense that it has an actual curvature,” Orr says. That aggressive rocker only makes sense at a world record pace. A runner lands heel first, then rolls from the midfoot to the forefoot, and that curved profile would resist them the entire way. “You’d almost feel like you were running uphill at the peak,” Orr says. “While someone like Josh runs at that speed, he doesn’t land on his heel. He lands on his midfoot, then his forefoot, and it’s almost like he’s running slightly downhill.”
Stiffness was the other big variable. Kerr is a big mileer, with a larger foot than most of his competitors and leg strength to match. “His ability to generate force is greater than many other people we would work with in this space,” Orr says. “The pick is much stiffer than anything we’ve made before.” The carbon fiber plate is tuned to the amount of force Kerr can specifically push on the track, a number that would leave a lighter runner fighting the shoe instead of riding it. Brooks says he used finite element analysis, the same computational model that aerospace and automotive engineers use to simulate stress in parts, to establish the plate’s configuration.
When I asked him what a recreational runner would feel if he put on a pair, Orr didn’t sugarcoat it. He suggested it would be best to start with a road racing shoe, because the Hyperion 222 would feel punished at any speed slower than the Kerr.
New materials within old rules.
Brooks kept the upper familiar so Kerr wouldn’t have to adapt to a completely foreign shoe, shaping it into a last built from his foot. The radical lives in the sole of the shoe. “The materials that provide the energy return, the materials that provide the stiffness and even the materials that provide the traction between the foot and the court surface are all very unique to us,” says Orr. “To date, we have never used any of these materials on a spiked track.” Traction includes permanent titanium studs, which Brooks says aren’t available on any mass-market spike, and the sole carries 222 carbon fiber traction elements as a nod to target time.
While the goal is to push technology as far as possible, there are rules that keep things under control. World Athletics strictly regulates competition spikes, and a single world record shoe receives no exemption. “There are height measurements at 12 percent and 75 percent across the midsole that have to be below 20 millimeters in height, and then there are restrictions in terms of the number of plates that can be placed in the midsole of these shoes,” Orr says. All brands design within the same limits, so the advantage should come from optimizing within them.
The validation process was completed within the expected deadline. Kerr took competing prototypes to an independent lab in Colorado to measure which version produced real benefits, and then Brooks’ team replicated those results in Albuquerque before locking in final construction. The finished nail arrived last week, was approved by World Athletics and was personally delivered to Kerr in the UK days before the race.
A speed suit designed for heat and silence
The apparel team followed the same playbook. Brooks performed 3D body scans of Kerr and built the suit one by one to her shape, with a sleeveless, high-neck silhouette, minimal seams, and a simple front zipper because that’s what Kerr prefers. Aerodynamics led all material decisions, but heat management came in second. The forecast for Saturday afternoon in London calls for temperatures around 70 degrees Fahrenheit, warm for a record attempt. “Anything that happens that really significantly increases your core temperature over an extended period of time is going to make it much harder for you to beat this record,” Orr says. Laser-cut perforations on the bottom half of the suit vent heat without compromising the compression fit, and the fabrics had to stretch through a stride that becomes very long at over 16 miles per hour.
Brooks’ videos about the project mention that the suit is completely silent, and when I asked Orr if this was an actual engineering goal, he pointed to Kerr’s mental approach rather than the fabric. “Josh talks a lot about being in a state of flow, and some of his performances happen in an environment where he’s in that state of flow, where he’s not listening to the crowd,” Orr says. “He’s not really that aware of what’s going on in and around him, and he’s really focused on the job at hand. A big part of the conversations with him about clothing is what are some of these elements that can cut through the noise?” Sixty thousand people will yell at you, but for athletes at this level, a subtle, persistent rustle of a garment can seem insurmountable.
What happens to the peak after Saturday?
Kerr trains on the Hyperion 222, but only for his hardest and fastest efforts. Everything below the threshold happens in something else, because geometry goes against slower rhythms. The shoe itself is a starting point rather than an end point. “This shoe is the first step in our plan for LA ’28,” Orr says, referring to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. “This is iteration one and we’re going to make changes in iterations two and three.” A championship version would look different, as tactical racing brings back the gear changes that this spike deliberately ignores.
Brooks made additional pairs and plans to do a public release. “It’s going to be very, very limited,” says Orr, and screenshots have already leaked on running forums since the shoe appeared on the World Athletics approved list. The record attempt occurs within a real race. Olympic medalist Yared Nuguse and NCAA record holder Ethan Strand have entered the field, so Kerr has to beat the clock and everyone else at the same time. Orr will be watching from the stands and told me he expects to be nervous for all 222 seconds.
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