Two world records were broken in the Adidas super shoes last weekend and the public can soon get their hands on a limited release. Our writer took a pair for a spin

• Bread and honey for breakfast and 150 miles a week training: secrets of Sawe’s world record
  

They’ve been billed as “humanity’s fastest shoe”, the cutting edge of trainer technology, lighter and bouncier than anything that’s gone before. Sabastian Sawe was wearing them when he became the first person to run an official marathon in less than two hours in London on Sunday, as was Tigst Assefa when she beat the women-only marathon record on the same day.

But could the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 help me – a lapsed runner of questionable skill – get my running mojo back? I was sceptical. My trusty New Balance trainers have seen me through a number of long-distance runs, and of the many reasons why I increasingly found running a slog, footwear didn’t feature highly on the list.

After the birth of her son during lockdown, the Welsh actor was flooded by disturbing thoughts she couldn’t shake, a plunge into darkness and isolation. She discusses how it changed her and what helped her recover

Kimberley Nixon’s memoir, She Seems Fine to Me, is out on 7 May, and she’s quite terrified. This isn’t an author worried by sales figures or reviews. Nixon’s book is an up-close-and-personal account of perinatal OCD. It tells of the dark, disturbing thoughts that taunted and haunted her after the birth of her son: her racing mind, relentless rumination, the Technicolor horror stories that played inside her head, always centred on harms to her baby. The book holds nothing back.

“Is it really brave or is it really stupid?” says Nixon. “In my head, I’ve written a book about what a horrible person I was and put it out in the world – and I have to keep reminding myself that’s not it. I’ve written a book about a mental health condition and trying to fight it.”

Each generation has a different view on when old age gets under way, but if my kids’ generation is correct, time is about to catch up with me ...

For boomers, old age begins at 75, according to a new survey, while gen X considers the start date of decrepitude to be 70, and millennials are a little stricter, at 63. These are all reasonable positions, and then you get to gen Z, who know nothing about anything: they say it’s 53.

By coincidence, I’d been thinking about this anyway at the weekend, after dancing so exuberantly I ripped my own clothes. I didn’t think that was ideal: it did raise concerns about what I must have looked like in the moment. But I figured as long as I stopped doing it before I got old, it was probably fine – and thought (being gen X) that gave me about 17 years. It turns out that as far as the youngsters are concerned, I have just over three months.

The track prodigy made it to world championships at 17 and joined Nike’s Oregon Project. At 29, Cain is detailing the hellish years under coach Alberto Salazar in her new memoir

“As someone who has lost touch with reality, I like to hold a firm grasp on it now,” Mary Cain says while we walk through a palm-tree spotted campus in California.

She’s telling me why she insisted she write her own memoir, This is Not About Running, without ceding the narrative to a ghostwriter, as happens with many athletes. “My story is so complicated … there are so many bad actors that I think it forces the reader to embrace nuance, and I don’t think you see that very often.”

Though solar was initially incorrectly blamed for crisis, renewables have helped insulate Spain from gas price rises caused by war in Middle East

One year ago today, all of Spain, and much of Portugal, suffered through a blackout of unprecedented scale and duration. In mere seconds, a cascading sequence of events burst through the grid and created Europe’s first “system black” event in recent memory.

Traffic signals failed, mobile networks stopped working entirely, petrol stations could not pump fuel and supermarkets could not process payments. Madrid’s metro came to a halt and people had to be pulled out of carriages. “People were stunned because this had never happened in Spain,” Carlos Condori, a 19-year-old construction sector worker, told AFP at the time. “There’s no [phone] coverage, I can’t call my family, my parents, nothing: I can’t even go to work.”

A new documentary travels around the world to identify the roots of ultra-mania – the fan movement that’s part progressive and sometimes criminal

‘Ultras” – hardcore football fans renowned for their stunning stadium displays and gang-like loyalty – were once a subculture confined to Italian stadiums. But since the late 1960s the movement has spread through global football terraces and become a more elevated cultural obsession.

Books on the subject include my own Ultra and James Montague’s 1312 (the numbers stand for ACAB, an abbreviation of “all cops are bastards”). Netflix has not only commissioned one film, Ultras, about a Neapolitan gang, but also three longer series: Puerta 7 (based in Argentina), Furioza and The Hooligan (both set in Poland).

Badenoch accuses Labour MPs who obey the whip of ‘acting like sheep’ ahead of crunch Mandelson vetting row vote in Commons

Q: Was there pressure on you to approve Mandelson’s vetting?

This is a reference to the claim that Keir Starmer misled MPs last week when he talked about no pressure being placed on the Foreign Office.

One is during my tenure. I was not aware of any pressure on the substance of the Mandelson DV case.

Question two was there pressure? Absolutely. And I’ve described it. And I also have seen what the Foreign Office said to you last night. [See 8.50am.]

I didn’t receive any direct calls from the chief of staff during my time as permanent undersecretary. So there was no call at all. My interactions were always when others were present in a general meeting, there weren’t very many of those either …

I’ve really racked my brains and I cannot recall Morgan McSweeney swearing in a meeting at me, or indeed just in general. So I don’t see any substance in that part of it and I think it’s important I say that this morning, given how many people have come to think that might be true.

US president makes unverified claims in Truth Social post, saying Tehran had told Washington it was ‘in a state of collapse’

US is being ‘humiliated’ by Iran’s leadership, says Friedrich Merz

Saudi Arabia is to host a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Jeddah later today, in what will be first in-person meeting of Gulf leaders since their states became dragged into the war.

A Gulf official told the Reuters news agency that the meeting aimed to craft a response to the thousands of Iranian missile and drone attacks Gulf states have faced since the US and Israel launched the war on Iran on 28 February.

US president has accused organisation of ‘ripping off the rest of the world’ by inflating oil prices

• Business live – latest updates

The United Arab Emirates has quit the Opec oil cartel in a heavy blow to the group and its de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, amid the global energy shock caused by the Iran war.

The stunning loss of the UAE, a longstanding Opec member, could create disarray and weaken the group, which has usually sought to show a united front despite internal disagreements over a range of issues from geopolitics to production quotas.

Protester says he migrated from Malaysia as a child and describes home secretary’s immigration policies as cruel

• UK politics live – latest updates

A protester who heckled Shabana Mahmood said he came to the UK as a child from Malaysia, describing the home secretary’s claim that he was a “white liberal” as “laughable”.

Joe, 32, who did not wish to give his last name, migrated from Malaysia at the age of four with his family. He said the home secretary’s proposed immigration rule changes would have left him, and thousands of children like him, in limbo.