Running Clogs
The dorkiest high performance equipment of all time
Given how slow we humans are at running the question arises: Is there some device which can help us run faster? The lame answer is yes: You can use a car or a bicycle. But we need to set some reasonable ground rules of not allowing the device to be powered or have wheels. Within those constraints there’s the obvious advantage of being able to make springs which return energy much better than human legs but the downside that any such device adds weight and messes up human biomechanics.
People have tried designing such things, more as disability aids then as performance enhancers, and the results have been disappointing. The problem seems to primarily be one of human biomechanics: Our knees go the wrong way. When you add spring return to human knees it does the most on knee extension which is partially pushing us backwards. Bird knees go in the right direction, part of a long list of ways in which birds are designed like sports cars while we’re designed like compact hatchbacks. They also have tetrachromacy, circular breathing, colorful feathers, the ability to regenerate lost hearing, and the ability to fly. We on the other hand have a placenta and the ability to puke.
To make the most of the way humans work it would be better to augment the ankle instead of the the knee. Horse rear legs work this way: What appears to be the horses rear knee is actually its ankle, with its foot massively extended. But human ankles are short and weak. To do it properly you need to make what looks, totally not coincidentally, like a clown shoes version of a Nike Fly. The shoe is a clog, consisting of two plates hinged at the front and with a spring between them at the back. The lower plate is curved to stay at about the same level as you roll forwards on it. There should be an additional strap connecting the knee to the front of the clog as it’s pulled upwards to keep the toes from dragging down. Spitballing on dimensions as a typical height 175cm male on me it should probably be about 15cm of compression on the spring and about 45cm from the back of the heel to the front of the top plate.
This design is optimized for converting downwards force to forward momentum, to the point where it would be a bit of a balancing act to stand still in them because the springs would be compressed and trying to shove you forwards. Not coincidentally jumping stilts have springs going the exact opposite direction because they’re trying to convert vertical force back into vertical force. Human physiology in naturally midway between the two but with bad springs.
It seems likely that the efficiency gains from this could more than compensate for the added weight. The Alphafly being banned from competition because it’s too much of an advantage is a positive signal for the design direction. At short distances it would be a clear loss because what matters for that is top speed not efficiency and the added weight would clearly hurt performance. I’m not sure what a good design for short distances might be. Maybe something which allows arm power to help pump legs and/or lengthening the legs to increase top speed. But designs like that are much more likely to fail from screwing up the user’s gait.