COSMOS MAGAZINE

5 technologies that are changing running forever

#1: Supershoes The first prototypes, from Nike, appeared in the 2016 U.S. Olympic Team Marathon Trials. But they didn’t take off until 2018, when researchers discovered that compared to the best-available conventional shoes, they reduced the energy cost of running by 4 per cent.

Credit: Getty

#2. Run my virtual heart When two-time Olympic marathoner Des Linden steps out to run, she isn’t alone. She’s feeding data to a “digital twin” of her heart: a virtual concoction that business technology provider TCS views as the next step in computer modeling.

Des Linden.Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty

#3. Stretchy batteries Two teams, one in China, the other in the UK, are designing stretchy, jelly-like batteries that can be worn like wrist-bands or perhaps athletic tape. The goal is to use them for medical devices, but the application to sports is obvious and might even produce devices that can be worn, like sweatbands.

Inside the self-healing lithium-ion battery: polymers can both connect the electrodes, and let the battery stretch and fix itself. Credit: Z. Li et al

#4. Supershoes redux Since Nike’s first supershoe, there has been a footwear arms race as companies scrambled not just to catch up, but to produce ever-faster footwear. A group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology is taking this a step farther by 3D printing critical components of supershoes—opening the door to giving every runner a perfectly tuned shoe.

Ruth Chepngetich of Kenya. Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty

Photo: Getty

#5. Running rivalry Social science isn’t high-tech, but the analytical processes it employs are. One intriguing finding comes from Gavin Kilduff of New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business, who compared multiple runners’ performances in races in which their rivals were present to those in which they weren’t, he found that they were about 5 seconds per kilometer faster when running against a possible rival.

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