The rise of the running industrial complex

Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI

As I walked up to the crowd of 400 runners on the sweltering SoHo street, the nervous buzz felt like the first day of school: the happy sound of friends reuniting after the offseason, the chatter of newcomers connecting. It was the first day of the NoName Program, a marathon training regimen “powered by Lululemon” in which New Yorkers from every walk of life spend 16 weeks preparing for the absurdity of running 26.2 miles. We were far from alone. By many measures, America now runs on running.

In the sport’s new golden age, more people are running than ever, and more records are falling faster than ever. Advances in technologies like carbon-plated shoes have allowed marathoners to reach times that would once have felt superhuman. But as elite runners are reaching new heights, many average runners like me are being bombarded with endless social media promotions for untested and pseudoscientific running gear purporting to help us become more like the elite. Some of these products can be helpful, many are a waste of money, and a few might even put runners at risk, all to fuel more than $4 billion a year in US spending.

I’m used to hype-filled marketing in most areas of life, but the deluge of running gear takes aim at a sport that I’ve come to love for its beauty and simplicity. “I love to race, but running’s not about the racing,” Nicholas Thompson, CEO of the Atlantic, avid marathoner, and author of the forthcoming memoir “The Running Ground,” tells me. “Running is about just heading up the mountain, heading out the door. And to do that, all you need is any pair of shoes, any pair of shorts, and any shirt.” But with more people running more half-marathons, marathons, and ultramarathons than ever, that’s opened a massive marketplace for products feeding on our insecurities.

Since I started running, my internet life has become a litany of running ads: carbon-plated shoes, hamstring-compression shorts, aerodynamic tanks, smart sunglasses, amino-optimized energy gels, and endless gimmicky recovery tools. Some of the wonders they claim to achieve for anxious and ambitious runners like me seem truly unbelievable.

Lately, my and many runners’ Instagram feeds have been filled with slick videos from Firefly, a “Shark Tank”-featured startup whose wristwatch-shaped devices jolt runners with electricity to, as they claim, “increase bloodflow to ease discomfort, speed recovery, and boost energy.” Firefly’s posts have been viewed millions of times, with more than 50,000 followers on Instagram.

Every day, I see dozens of ads for different running products hawking miracles that upon further inspection are more mundane.

The more I read from the company’s website, the more skeptical I became. Firefly’s marketing materials say the device “increases microcirculation 399%” to “move 3x more blood than pneumatic compression.” The studies Firefly links to on its website affirm the device’s ability to promote blood flow. One of the studies, published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, also found that the device’s electricity-induced twitching provided “between 50 and 70% of the blood flow achieved during walking.” A Shark Tank deal, a $12.5 million valuation, all for a more expensive, less effective alternative to walking?

I raised this point with Lauren Campbell, the CMO and a partner at Firefly. “People will say, well, why don’t I just go for a walk? And if you can, you absolutely should,” she said. “But I think there’s so many people that what they get a little bit daunted by, I need to do an hour training run and then I need to do a half-hour walk.”

Using electrical stimulation to activate muscles isn’t quite cutting-edge technology: It’s as ancient as Rome. As early as 60 AD, Romans used electric eels to experiment with the technique. While Firefly may be a lot more user-friendly than eels, it’s unclear if it’s much different from the array of cheaper consumer muscle stimulators that have been on the market for decades. Swapna Ghanta, a board-certified surgeon, says Firefly’s studies “are quite limited” and don’t “support the claims that Firefly is substantially better.” One pair of non-rechargeable Firefly costs $48 and dies after 30 hours of use, meaning users have to shell out for another pair after as few as eight recovery sessions. An online shopping search turns up hundreds of muscle stimulators, some for as little as $20, many of which could theoretically last runners years.

Firefly says its technology is different from these cheaper, longer-lasting alternatives; its website says the product “is not a muscle stim or TENS unit.” To get cleared to sell the product, Firefly emphasized to federal regulators how similar it was to existing products. And in 2014 the FDA agreed, finding the product “substantially equivalent” to these legacy alternatives. Campbell told me that while the company cited its “substantial equivalence” to the Compex Sports Plus TENS unit to get FDA clearance, Firefly is quite different in practice. “It’s a different hertz. It’s a different stimulation, and so we are providing a really gentle stimulation to the nerve” she said.

Positive reviews of Firefly abound, but some running experts are skeptical. Tim Waanders, a doctor at the New York-based Finish Line Physical Therapy, tells me that “many runners would be better off spending time foam rolling, stretching, and doing their prescribed exercises to help them improve recovery for a fraction of the cost.”

Firefly is emblematic of the genre. Every day, I see dozens of ads for different running products hawking miracles that upon further inspection are more mundane. An ad for a $199 hip flexor stretching tool called The Mark warned that untreated issues with your “primary core” could “affect your entire body.” A disclaimer on its website says the device is not “intended to diagnose, cure, prevent, treat or mitigate any medical condition or disease” and has not been evaluated by the FDA. A spokesperson for Mark did not respond to requests for comment.

An Instagram reel with a stirring motivational soundtrack tells the story of a runner preparing for his 152^nd marathon. “What is the most important thing for a marathon runner?” he asks, before listing off the products he uses from the supplements company Xendurance. The firm markets its products to do everything from cut weight to boost testosterone; its main running product is Extreme Endurance. The firm says that the running product will boost “vitality,” improve speeds and accelerate recovery. Another Xendurance ad offers the tantalizing promise that the supplement would stop me from “bonking” at mile 20, the crashing feeling that has made so many of my prior marathons go from joy to agony.

Looking beyond the marketing, the claims get murkier. A study cited on its website found some evidence that Xendurance can reduce lactate and creatine kinase; it didn’t find any difference in performance by athletes who were taking the supplement. The study compared outcomes to a placebo, not the generic sodium bicarbonate that athletes have taken for modest performance gains for decades. It remains unclear if the product works better than baking soda. One month of Xendurance Extreme Endurance costs $59.95, which buys you about 50 pounds of baking soda, enough to last many athletes decades. Xendurance’s owner, Jason St. Clair, said that runners would need to take large amounts of baking soda for 8-12 weeks to see positive effects without side effects like “stomach issues, diarrhea, bloating,” while his product would work in 72 hours with no side effects.

There is one running technology that’s unquestionably changed the sport forever: the super shoe. These carbon-plated machines have transformed running over the last decade, reducing injuries, accelerating recovery, and allowing world records to be broken at a clip never before seen. Julia Lucas, NoName’s coach, says the super shoe “has just changed the running landscape.” Lucas, who retired from professional running in 2014, says the shoes have made it possible for today’s elite runners to hit speeds that were out of reach when she competed.

Any powerful technology can also hurt you.Julia Lucas

When amateurs try to copy the pros with these shoes — as their marketing campaigns sometimes claim you can — you can break a lot more than just speed records.

Last year, I was in the best running condition of my life, set to blow past my previous marathon record. Come race day, the final feet through Central Park felt less like a victory lap and more like pure agony. And the main culprit was the $300 super shoe I bought just days before the race. I salivated over the manufacturer’s testing data, looking at how much it improved runners’ speed. But it just didn’t fit, only delivering increased foot pain. The bouncy carbon fiber felt like running on air for 10 miles, but by mile 18 felt like walking on glass. By mile 22, the glass had turned molten.

My experience isn’t unique, the running coaches I spoke to tell me. “People see shoes and they’re told that it makes them faster, and they don’t realize that you should have worn these things like months before you ran,” says Coffey, NoName’s cofounder. “Now you’re stuck 26.2 miles of having to get from the beginning to the end being uncomfortable.”

The shoes are a “powerful technology, and any powerful technology can also hurt you,” says Lucas. “Someone can’t not do the work, put on the shoes, and be a good runner.” Finding the perfect shoes matters for race day, but not nearly as much as being in the best shape possible when you show up to the start line, “going back to that ground floor of putting in the work, being consistent, watching your body change very slowly over time.”

Thompson put it in similar terms. “Somebody who’s wearing an old pair of beat-up super shoes, cotton T-shirt, pair of shorts that they got in gym class, is going to be half a percent slower than someone who’s wearing new super shoes, perfect hamstring compression tights, perfect air circulation singlet, [and] has a little thing in their nose.”

The purveyors of running gear make emphatic statements about how their product will help all of us, transforming our race days, our lives. The reality is that they’ll only work for some, and with the exception of race shoes, the effects are likely to be more measured than miraculous. The variation in our stride, metabolism, circulation, and even DNA makes our running needs unique — and the impact of different running gear can be just as unique. For experienced runners, that can mean more options and tools than ever before to optimize their training, improve their recovery, and push their limits. For beginning runners who are daunted by the simple prospect of finishing a marathon, the world of running marketing can be a constant assault on the senses.

Running has helped me take ownership of my health, build community, and reshape my sense of who I am and what is possible in this life. It’s shown the limits of human endurance, and generosity in its purest form. Running the New York City Marathon, retracing streets I’ve walked since I was a child, I see a kindness, neighborliness, and general lack of jerkery that is antithetical to our city’s usual code.

Last year, when my super shoes failed, New Yorkers were there for me. When I stopped to loosen the laces around mile 20 in the South Bronx, I was so depleted I couldn’t figure out how to retie them. A 40-year-old man defeated by a task that they teach preschoolers. A woman in the crowd saw me struggling and came over to tie them. I was dumbstruck. But that’s the spirit of marathon days all around the world, moments of connection when so many come out to cheer on complete strangers, help them however they can to keep moving on to the finish line.

As running’s commercialization accelerates and more and more companies try to cash in on the craze with unproven claims, I fear we’ll lose that spirit. And as much as I want to go faster and push myself farther, there’s no gear that could compare to the beauty and humanity of running with my entire city cheering me on.

Albert Fox Cahn is the founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, or STOP, a New York-based civil-rights and privacy group.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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