It is a pleasant Saturday after a hectic but enjoyable week. This morning (well 11:30...) I went running for an hour, and can honestly say I enjoyed every minute of it. I like it when that happens. Anyways, all the important people in my department are in Vietnam this week and next week, developing shoes on site. Interns aren’t permitted to go, so I’m holding down the fort for my division. A fair amount to do, but it’s less stressful knowing your boss isn’t going to walk in any second. The most exciting thing this week though was the progress made on my “Best Practices of Running Shoe Design” project. I don’t remember how much I’ve talked about that so far. Basically it is a presentation that a designer, developer, product manager, or anyone else could read with little prior knowledge on running shoes, and then come up with a great biomechanically sound design and eventually shoe. It should smooth over the disconnect between the folks doing research and the people actually making the new shoes.
This past week, on Wednesday evening, another intern and myself got to take a drive to Switzerland. The Rennbahn Clinic located in Basel Switzerland is one of the top clinics in the world attracting both recreational and professional athletes from all over Europe to come for professional advice, gait analysis, etc. They see a lot of patients, and do a lot of research. They basically know everything there is to know about running and soccer biomechanics (soccer is Karen’s project, the other intern).
In summary, we arrived in the evening and got settled in to the expensive hotel that PUMA paid for, took a short tour of the area (self guided tour, pictures coming next week), got a great nights sleep, got up in the morning, checked out, went for breakfast, headed to the clinic, misjudged the time we needed, had an hour to kill outside in the cold (but with a great sunrise), finally met two of the owners of the clinic who are two of the top pioneers in the field, and then asked them questions for about 5 hours (I tested their ideas on my run this morning), before they took us to lunch (which would have been super expensive if we’d had to pay for it!), and sent us on our 5 hour drive back to Herzo. Yes, that was a run-on sentence. On the way back, driving a manual VolksWagon Golf Variant I hit 200 Km/h (125 mph), drove through 9 or 10 roundabouts (traffic circles), and got good practice with stop and go traffic trying not to stall the car. When I did stall though, the engine automatically restarted which was nice. Also, at traffic lights the engine would automatically turn off to save energy. Eventually we had to get gas (about twice what it costs in the States), but were at a loss at how to open the gas door on the side of the car... I searched all over for a lever by my seat. Karen came around with her little flashlight to look some more. Finally I found a lever, pulled it, thought I heard something pop open, though the gas door was still shut, before Karen discovered that if you just push the door, it pops open! Side note, the popping open that I thought I heard was actually the hood of the car. We drove the last 50 miles with it open a few inches. Oops... kept the engine from overheating I reckon ;) - In the end, we arrived back in Herzo just in time to go to the Internationale Studenten Treff where we were baking Christmas cookies. Delightful! I’m making some more this weekend with my mom’s recipe to bring to work on Monday.
