Olympic Trials Marathon Athletes Sell Their Alphaflys on eBay – runnersworld.com

The day before the Olympic Trials Marathon, 28-year-old Seattle runner Kevin Colón didn’t know where to get the pre-release shoe that Nike had promised each of the race’s 695 competitors, the Air Zoom Alphafly Next%. He tried asking race organizers, but they told Colón that they weren’t allowed to say.

Eventually, the Lee’s Summit, Missouri, native saw an athlete who already had their Alphaflys, which is how Colón got tipped off to a private room inside the Georgia World Congress Center. A man asked for Colón’s name and ID at the store, then a personal shopper escorted him inside. “It was literally a conference room full—12 boxes high all around the walls—probably 2,000 pairs in there, I’d guess,” Colón told Runner’s World. “(Nike) didn’t ask any of our sizes, so I don’t know how they planned on getting everyone a pair. They just brought a ton.”

At a retail price of $275 per pair, the 695-runner Alphafly drop represented $191,125 of Nike merch. But the shoes could be worth a whole lot more than that on the resale market: Pairs from the Trials are selling on eBay for upwards of $1,000.

Most of the Alphaflys on the current resale market came from Nike’s members-only February 29 drop, although most resellers don’t actually have their shoes. Rather, the NikePlus members lucky enough to get an Alphafly are selling order confirmations, promising to ship the shoes to secondary customers once they receive them from Nike.

But a handful of sellers already have their shoes. Photos of the Alphaflys of the Trials on eBay show them in their race weekend element, lounging on hotel beds, sharing photos with race bibs and GPS watches. Some ZoomX midsoles are deadstock, others have a shakeout’s or a marathon’s worth of miles in them.

An eBay seller who goes by “newmexicorunner” has a men’s size 11 available for $799. “This pair was used for exactly 26.2 miles at the US Olympic Trials on 2.29.2020, like new condition,” reads the description. (Bold move to not even warm up in brand new shoes.) Another runner, who apparently did test out her new racing kicks (“one 3.2-mile shakeout run and one marathon”) has a men’s size 10 with a high bid of $622 at press time.

Other runners hit markups that aren’t typically attainable when you’re selling goods that are, erm, legal. Eugene-based qualifier Eric Finan sold a set of new men’s size 11 Alphaflys for $1,414. Another set of Alphaflys in Finan’s eBay store is currently bidding at $660.

An unidentified athlete who wore a women’s size 11 for a 4-mile shakeout is selling the lightly used racers for $1,300, and Raleigh Distance Project athlete Sheri Eberhard listed her shoes as “sold” on Facebook Marketplace for $2,000.

Nike hasn’t announced a general release date for the Alphafly, so the present period of low supply should keep prices high for the foreseeable future. Initial feedback from Trials Marathon runners indicates the shoes feel like they look: taller and bouncier than the Vaporfly Next%. “Honestly, they felt fast. (It was) a comfortable shoe,” San Francisco, California-based qualifier Max Storms told Runner’s World. However, Storms noted the high stack made them feel a tad unstable. “If it weren’t for the potholes and hairpins in Atlanta,” he said. “I probably would’ve raced them.”

Despite the opportunity cost of keeping the shoes, Colón won’t be listing his pair for sale. While other runners took the racing shoes for a shakeout and opted against competing in them, Colón immediately preferred the softer Alphafly to the Vaporfly Next% that he used to qualify in Houston.

That extra bit of cushioning, Colón figured, couldn’t hurt. “I know Kipchoge ran in them,” he said. “When you get to a marathon and you feel like you’ve done everything and you hear this might give you an extra 20 to 30 seconds, you might as well take that.”

Test Editor A former Division 1 runner, Dan grew up riding fixies and mountain bikes and now reviews everything from performance running shoes to road and cross bikes, to the latest tech for runners and cyclists at Bicycling and Runner’s World.