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By Root 255 0

from a block of wood. Mass production seems to have begun prior to the 14th century, for Edward II in 1342 decreed that shoes should be sized. Their length was measured in barleycorns, three to an inch. This is still the basis of shoe measurements, one-third inch to a size in length. We start sizing from a baseline of three inches in children and seven inches in adults. Widths vary with length; in a given size the widths vary by one and a half inches. Unpaired shoes were introduced in England in the 15th century when gout became common and these shoes had broad square toes to relieve pressure. The most recent innovation seems to have been the hard box toe to preserve the appearance of the shoe.

Now, let’s focus in on the running shoe. It seems that the earliest sports shoes were developed in the 1830s by the Liverpool rubber company owned by John Boyd Dunlop. Although they were first called sand shoes because they were worn on the beach by the Victorian middle classes, they eventually became known as plimsolls because the lines formed by the rubber and canvas bond looked similar to the Plimsoll line on a ship’s hull. In 1933, Dunlop launched its Green Flash range of trainers. Adi Dassler (and his brother Rudolf) started making sports shoes in Herzogenaurach, Germany in 1920 and in 1936 Jesse Owens wore a pair of them when he won four Olympic gold medals in Berlin. ADIDAS (Adi Dassler) was formed in 1948 with the now famous three stripes logo developing from three support leather bands used to bolster the sides. By the 1956 Olympics, dozens of competitors were wearing ADIDAS shoes. Rudolf Dassler broke away to form PUMA. Amidst the first rumblings of the jogging boom, NIKE (after the Greek goddess of victory) was launched by American Phil Knight, a former track star at the University of Oregon, and his waffle-making coach Bill Bowerman in 1971(Surely you remember the NIKE Waffle Trainer!). The NIKE ‘Swoosh’ is arguably the most successful logo in the world and was conceived for Phil Knight by a local Oregon graphic design student, Carolyn Davidson, for a total fee of $35. (But don’t worry about the graphic designer. In September 1983, NIKE presented Carolyn Davidson with a rather substantial share package as a way of saying “Thank-you.”) ASICS (acronym for Animus Sanus In Corpore Sano, which is Latin for A Sound Mind In A Sound Body) first introduced its shoes in North America in 1977 while REEBOK (named after a species of an African gazelle) entered the U.S. Market in 1979 as the running shoe was slowly transforming into a fashion item. 1987 was declared the “Year of the Running Shoe” by the clothing industry, the same year NIKE launched the “cross-trainer” and its flagship running-shoe, the Air Max. After 16 years of research, NIKE introduced its SHOX line of runners in 2000, arguably the first athletic shoe on springs (foam)!

Part 2—Shoes and Injuries

For the last 15 years or so, buying a pair of runners has always been accompanied by a warm fuzzy feeling inside, a feeling that comes from the certain knowledge that you’re investing in a high-tech device purpose-designed to protect you from injury and improve your performance. You can just see all those smart dedicated NIKE mechanical engineers hard at work developing and testing newer and better space-age materials to shield you from the terrible pounding you submit yourself to in order to “Just do it!’ Gel, air, channels, honeycomb, microspheres, super-light materials, foam springs and soon … yes, you guessed it, micro-chips in the soles of your shoes (better than diamonds, I suppose). New round laces and ribbon eyelets result in that custom-fitted feel supplemented by molded sorbothane insoles or special orthotics from your local prosthetist and you’re ready to tackle any distance.

Now here’s the catch. If all this high-tech stuff is supposed to be preventing running injuries by shielding us from impact, why is it that two out of every three runners are sidelined every year because of a running injury? Why is it that since the great jogging boom of the mid-seventies,