A carbon plate and springy foam can shave precious seconds off a race. The same design may also nudge a runner’s stride in ways that raise new questions about injury. That is the tension running through a new study from Mass General Brigham, where researchers tested elite distance runners in three kinds of shoes and found that advanced footwear technology, often called “super shoes,” altered several parts of running form tied to bone stress injuries. The performance upside of these shoes is well known. The tradeoff is less settled. Published in PM&R, the analysis looked at 23 healthy elite runners, 11 women and 12 men, who ran in a neutral trainer, a lightweight foam shoe, and an advanced footwear shoe built with highly cushioned foam and a stiff embedded plate. The runners completed each trial at three self-selected efforts: an easy training pace, a tempo effort, and 5-kilometer race speed. The shoes did not simply make people move faster. They changed how they moved. Footwear types investigated in this study. This includes neutral cushioned shoes …