This may well be the most awesome foot race in the history of foot races and it is called Course of the Force. It’s like those relay races your coach forced on you back in high school, but instead of small metal batons that you may or may not dream about beating your coach with, you get freaking lightsabers. And you get to keep those limited edition sabers, assuming you don’t fall and break yours in a pothole.

Basically, this is a charity event where geeks purchase quarter-mile slots of time that they will run carrying their lightsaber. The event spans from July 7th through 11th, between Santa Monica and San Diego, leading right up to Comic-Con. Funds collected will benefit the Make A Wish Foundation.

You don’t have to dress up to participate, but it is highly encouraged. I would love to see some guy dressed like Darth Maul panting and sweating profusely as he runs up the Southern California coast wielding a dual-blade lightsaber. This thing should be epic, check out the video and reserve your spot here.

[via Nerdist]

Nike developed this with world-record holding amputee triathlete Sarah Reinertsen and Össur. The sole has a stacked design and uses a stretch rubber leash over a rubber waffle outsole. Nike used ‘regrind‘ materials salvaged from reused shoes, a polyurethane foam midsole that was topped by a thermal plastic, which was made from recycled air bags.

Plastic tabs lock the sole in place. Reinertsen tested the prototypes and worked with the design team to develop this incredible high-performance running solution.

Seriously though, I wonder when, if not already, amputee runners will be able to run faster than able-bodied ones.

[via designboom]

It’s being developed by Dr. Russ Tedrake’s team at MIT alongside that of Dr. Jerry Pratt of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IMHC.) The team is working on a new robot that’s called FastRunner, and it looks like it should be pretty speedy. In fact, faster than any other robot that we know of. In their computer simulations, FastRunner can already hit 30 mph and they think that it can reach 50 mph without any problems. The main reason why it’s so fast is the spring-loaded articulated leg design, which only needs one motor to operate.

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This means that FastRunner would be light and dexterous, allowing it to jump over obstacles, making it an all terrain robot. The project is part of a DARPA challenge to create a robot that can run more than 25 miles per hour.

[via Plasticpals]

But MABEL the robot can tear around at those speeds, thanks to her human-like leg and knee structure. MABEL was created by Johnathan Hurst of Oregon State University, and the running tests were performed by professor Jessy Grizzle and a team from the University of Michigan and Carnegie Mellon. While MABEL’s peak speed is 6.8mph, her average speed is about 4.4mph, which is still pretty fast for a robot in my book. Plus, she lifts her feet about 3 to 4 inches into the air when she runs.

Let’s cut to the chase and watch MABEL in action:

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Boy, that’s pretty amazing stuff there, Maynard. But I have to say that MABEL sort of gives me the creeps. Not only is that noise she makes as she runs enough to make me think I’m being chased by an army T-800s, I’ve been pretty freaked out by disembodied robot legs ever since Herbie Hancock’s Rockit music video.

[via Futurity via Holy Kaw]

Yep, it was a real marathon, not a mini-marathon, and definitely not this.  There were five robots running a 330-foot track for the Vstone Robot Marathon [JP]. They had to run this over 400  times to complete a full marathon. The race was a full 26.2 miles long, but the guys over at PlasticPals point out that in robot scale (1/4.5 scale), they would have actually run closer to 118 miles in human scale.

The mini humanoid Robovie-PC stands about 16 inches tall and weighs 53 pounds. It has a total of 20 joints. Robovie-PC beat his closest opponent by just a second. It took him 55 hours to complete the marathon. His average speed was less than 0.5 mph. I guess there’s not danger of robots winning any real marathons soon.

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[via Yahoo!News [JP] via PlasticPals]

Now, you won’t be using the GPS capabilities to map out automotive routes, but it will come in handy for plotting waypoints for exercise and other outdoor activities. The Forerunner 405 contains all the electronics necessary to track speed, distance, pace, calories burned, location and even heart rate (assuming you add the optional heart rate monitor).

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The watch can automatically sync with your computer wirelessly, downloading workout data as well as receiving route data for future outings. You can even beam locations, workouts and course information with your running companions if they happen to also wear the same type of watch.

The Forerunner 405 is slated for a Q1 2008 release and will retail for about $319 USD.

[via NaviGadget]

According to the description, the watch will feature wireless integration with Nike+ in-shoe sensors. It can then display distance, pace, elapsed time and calories burned information on the watch’s LCD backlit display. A USB port is provided for downloading data to the Nikeplus website for historical progress tracking. As one would expect with such a leak, no pricing or release date was revealed.

[via Podophile]