On the open plains of Greece, wedged between two tributaries, the sweet
smell of fennel fills the air. Wild flowers dot the landscape as pine
trees climb into the mountains framing the blue sky. An estimated 6,400
Persian corpses lay dead on the battlefield to the mere 192 Athenians
slain. The young courier Pheidippides takes off in only a sheet and
sandals, running the 26 miles of unpaved trails to the town of Athens
without a single drop of Gatorade, a pair of shorts or encouragement from
family and friends.
Marathon running might not be as difficult as it was 2,500 years ago,
but have we inundated the sport with so much equipment that we have lost
the essence of the race? Adidas recently created a running shoe with
enough features to rival TiVo. With magnetic sensors, a 20MHz
microprocessor and a mini electric motor that spins at 6,000 rpm, the
Adidas-1 will give your old Chuck Taylors a serious inferiority
complex.
Age-old activities like walking, running and biking have gone all
Jetsons on us. Shoes that think, shirts that measure heart rate and
sunglasses that play all your favorite songs are just a few upgrades that
indicate it might be high time to chuck that terry cloth sweatband. If man
can’t rival machine, he can at least slap enough mini computers all over
his sweaty frame to look like one. But can athletes outsmart sore muscles
with NASA-developed miracle gels or shop themselves into a faster
finishing time with space-aged gear?
The sporting goods industry isn’t feeling any pain. With sales of $52
billion in 2004 (a 4 percent climb from the previous year), pricey
high-tech gear is the star player on the court. The $300 brainchild of
Nike and Phillips is the MP3RUN, a 256MB flash-based music player that
attaches to your shoe. The device knows how far and how fast you run, your
geographical coordinates and how much you secretly still love Dave
Matthews Band. The info travels to your computer via Bluetooth, where Nike
then designs your personal training program.
Before David Ryan received an MP3RUN as a gift, he was one of running’s
remaining purists, strapped with nothing but those gloriously short
running shorts and a set of wrist weights. Ryan says the pedometer on the
device came in handy during his marathon training by taking the guesswork
out of once seemingly aimless runs around Lake Merced. He also spent a few
hours in front of the computer toying with the training features of the
interactive Nike program, but he admits most of the other functions of the
MP3RUN went unused.
This seasoned runner’s favorite feature is the smooth female voice that
purrs through Ryan’s ear buds when he hits a mile marker, letting him know
how far he’s run. “She’s very encouraging,” Ryan says with a chuckle.
The Scott eVest 3.0 is for the runner who’s already snatched up the
latest gadgets and still has a cool $350 to spare. With 42 hidden
electronics pockets, the eVest allows the user to run wires through the
jacket and connect all the equipment to a single hub, creating truly
functional fashion.
Ready to go straight to sci-fi? The Tanita Total Innerscan ($700) lets
the serious athlete play doctor by conducting a detailed physical scan at
home. An electrical current measures weight, body fat percentage, bone and
muscle mass, basal metabolic rate, body water percentage and metabolic
age.
Machines can’t run without fuel. New sports nutritional supplements
come with their own high tech twists and are packed with enough vitamins
and minerals to eradicate rickets in a small third world country. The
makers of Oxyshot, a cutting edge sports supplement, say it was developed
from NASA technology and is the result of years of research and
development. Popular with rugby players, football stars and boxers,
Lact-Away is an anti-inflammatory supplement made from pycnogenol, an
extract of French maritime tree bark. Amino Vital provides performance
athletes with 2,400 milligrams of amino acids in one “forest berry”
flavored bar.
Professional cyclist “Fast Freddie” Rodriguez is one of Clif Bar Inc.’s
high performance athletes. He requested that Clif turn up the caffeine a
notch in his favorite mocha gel called “Fast Freddie Expresso,” a flavored
organic brown rice syrup that provides performance athletes with calories
and electrolytes for long hauls. But don’t look for it in stores anytime
soon. Senior Brand Director Steven Grossman says, “the stuff tastes like a
mouthful of espresso grounds.”
With all these new goods we should have racers breaking the sound
barrier by the end of the decade. Or perhaps we’re running the risk of a
major computer crash.
“Advancements over the last 25 years have undermined the act of
running,” says Rich Benyo, editor of "Marathon and Beyond" magazine, who
is in the midst of his 18th book, “Twenty-Five Strides to Sweeter
Running.” Mankind was once capable of running from saber tooth tigers and
chasing down antelopes, but now, “people are wearing so much equipment
they look like they are going deep sea diving.” According to Benyo, the
average marathon time has actually clocked in an hour slower in the last
10 years.
While man seems to be slowing down, the advancements in sports
technology are just picking up speed. Shoe design has made huge strides
since 1921, when former basketball star Charles H. “Chuck” Taylor became
the spokesmodel for Converse’s cutting edge designs. The wildly popular
canvas high-top eventually became Taylor’s namesake. The original Converse
All Star boasted improved traction and ankle support. “The old Chucks were
made with natural rubber,” Robles says. They were a paler yellow on the
bottom and gave the shoe its bounce.
The high demand for rubber during WWII gave rise to the synthetic
rubber industry, eventually leading track coach Bill Bowerman of Nike to
pour the stuff into his wife’s waffle iron in 1970 and changing the look
of running’s sole to what it is today. The new Adidas-1 may be the most
expensive athletic shoe on the market, but other performance shoes are
only a step and a half cheaper, averaging $100 a pop.
Despite the hype, it is widely agreed that the right shoe is crucial
for injury prevention. Yet for a select few, the best shoe is no shoe.
Rick Roeber plans to have finished six marathons by the end of 2005 and to
have logged over 2,500 training and racing miles—and to have done it all
barefoot. Roeber says the best way for a runner to perfect her or his
stride is by losing all the overpriced padding of running shoes. He says
since he tossed his trainers over two years ago, the knee and ankle pain
he used to experience has completely disappeared.
“Hundreds of microprocessors are actually in the soles of your feet,”
Roeber says.
The folks at Nike don’t think going shoeless is such a shabby idea, but
would rather recommend something a little more marketable. The Nike Free
was introduced earlier this year as the antithesis of the growingly
complex running shoes on the market. Closer to a glorified sock than a
shoe, the Nike Free boasts many of the same advantages Roeber says running
barefoot has to offer.
“A child demonstrates running as one of the
simplest forms of motion lunging forward with his first strides as opposed
to steps,” Benyo says. He believes we need to invest a lot more into the
act of running, as opposed to the stuff around it, in order to really be
able to enjoy it. “Boston Marathon didn’t start handing out water until
1978. Port-a-potties weren’t even invented until the seventies. Before
then you had to take a dump at home before you came out to race. Now
everyone wants their own toilet.”
Until then, the line starts here, so let’s hope you can hold it. Even
the highest-tech gear hasn’t been able to budge our biology, but it may
succeed in distracting us momentarily from the aches and pains of a good
old, ass-kicking workout.