Sportswear maker Nike looks set to steal the limelight at this year's summer Beijing Olympics with its latest innovation, the Flywire track shoes. The company will supply the U.S. track and field team with two pieces of Flywire footwear--the Zoom Victory Spikes and Zoom Matumbo.
U.S. track and fielders will sport the Zoom Victory Spike, currently Nike's lightest middle-distance track spike, the company says.
(Credit: Crave Asia)Already creating quite a buzz in the industry with its revolutionary lightweight construction, the Flywire design is said to be inspired by the cables from a suspension bridge. It basically makes use of a strong Vectran thread arranged in a fan-shaped pattern at anchor points around the shoe. The result is a shoe that's extremely light, yet reportedly cheap and easy to manufacture.
But, just how light are the new Flywire track shoes? The Zoom Matumbo will be Nike's lightest distance track shoes at about .2 pounds per pair, while the Zoom Victory Spikes for middle distance events like the 800m and 5,000m will also weigh just about .2 pounds.
For the record, Michael Johnson's famed pair of golden track shoes at the 1996 Atlanta Games tipped the scales at about a quarter of a pound, which is lightweight even by today's standards.
Nike has made the Flywire technology available commercially with the recent launch of its Flywire series of running shoes in the U.S. The company plans to release the track shoes to consumers later in October. Running-shoe technology is coming a long way these days--have a look at these biodegradable shoes by Brooks.
(Via Crave Asia)
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Brooks' Trance 8 men's running shoes might be silver, blue, black, and gray, but they're actually quite green. The shoes feature Brooks' new BioMoGo foam midsole, which contains a natural additive that encourages anaerobic microbes to break the shoe down more easily once it hits the landfill.
The footwear company is debuting BioMoGo in the $140 Trance 8 this month, with plans to extend the technology to all Brooks performance running shoes by the end of 2009.
Brooks' Trace 8 is made to biodegrade more readily in active landfills.
(Credit: Brooks)Knowing how crucial sturdy shoes are to any runner, Brooks is making a point of stressing that shoes with BioMoGo midsoles won't just spontaneously fall apart in your closet or while you're taking a jog around the local track.
That's because the material enhances a type of biodegradation that requires the simultaneous occurrence of three environmental conditions: the absence of oxygen, the presence of many microbes, and the existence of moisture.
"You will not find these three environmental conditions in places where shoes are worn or stored," the company explains. "Biodegradation can only happen once the shoe has been thrown away and buried deep in an active enclosed landfill."
Brooks says that while traditional ethylene vinyl acetate midsoles can last up to 1,000 years in an enclosed landfill, tests have shown that BioMoGo can biodegrade in roughly 20 years when placed in the same environment. By using BioMoGo in its shoes, Brooks predicts it will save nearly 30 million pounds of landfill waste over a 20-year period.
The company says it deliberately decided not to patent its technology, but instead to share it with other footwear companies as part of its overall green initiative. Thanks to Uncrate for running this one by us.
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