Gadget-powered runs are good
Research, apparently, has suggested running was one of the things that made us human. Standing up on two legs and breaking into a trot delineated our forebears from other animals several million years ago.
Or so I’ve read somewhere. I’m no anthropologist.
The point I’m trying to make is that running has been around for about as long as humans.
And the point of making that point is that you’d think we’d know better than to clutch on to every latest thing going.
But, no: runners are suckers for fads.
Science shows runners will click on a social media post promising insight into the hottest ‘‘thing’’ – be that a training theory or a device – faster than it took for Usain Bolt to react to the starter’s pistol when he broke the 100m world record.
And at race expos before races, where merchandisers peddle their wares, gadgets and elixirs cram the tables.
Apparently there’s a correlation between a willingness to buy something and proximity to a race.
I’ll admit to being wooed by bright and shiny running things and ideas, and I started young with some downright wacky stuff.
In high school, a mate, Zeke, convinced me that we should try running after drinking salt water. Thinking back, the theory probably came about through confusion between ‘‘salts’’, as in electrolytes, with ‘‘salt’’, as in the stuff you put on hot chips.
Anyway, we ran one-mile laps
Once upon a time, the night before a marathon, everyone would go to a ‘‘pasta party’’ to carbo load. Now, I wouldn’t take a ticket to one of those if it was going free.
around the Auckland Domain after school, the first one without drinking anything – I guess you call that the ‘‘control’’ in this schoolboy scientific experiment.
Subsequent laps were run after slurping salty water.
Needless to say, the liquid did not stay down. And Zeke and I didn’t adopt it as a performanceenhancing boost when it came time for the interzone crosscountry champs.
But that early encounter with