4A • June 22, 2018 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com
SignalViewpoints
Putting it all on
the (laundry) line
W
PHOTOS JUSTIN TER HAR
The two running shoes used in Justin Ter Har’s study: the Hoka One One maximal running shoe and New Balance traditional neu-
tral running shoe.
If the shoe fits,
should we run in it?
E
very shoe can make you run further
and faster. At least what their
manufacturers want you to believe.
“Our J-Frame supports and guides
your foot without the use of heavy,
rigid or unforgiving materials,” reads
promotion from Hoka shoes. “It gets its
name from the “J” shape, which uses a
firmer density foam to support the inside
of your foot and heel. It’s stability plus
Hoka comfort.”
Ever since P.F. Flyer’s sent kids
dreaming of speed — “shoes guaranteed
to make a kid run faster and jump higher”
— the goal has been to get us to purchase
a competitive edge.
Stakes rose and the velocity of our
runners increased. The shattering of the
5-minute mile, the legend of Olympian
Steve Prefontaine, the Oscar-winning,
cross-country journey of Forrest Gump —
all created a cultural image of the runner
against the world, a solo unaided by gad-
getry, an engine, a horse or a ball.
With one exception: the running shoe.
Running shoes matter
Justin Ter Har will be the first
OSU-Cascades undergraduate to begin a
doctoral program in OSU’s neuromechan-
ics program. He starts in the fall and is the
recipient of a graduate teaching assistant-
ship.
The Seaside High School grad is part
of an academic team that delivered the
thesis, “Influence of Maximal Running
Shoes on Biomechanics Before and After
a 5K Run” on June 7 at the American
College of Sports Medicine Northwest
Chapter conference.
Ter Har, 24, knows the joy of running,
first developing an interest as a freshman
in Bend. “Competing against myself every
day was an important thing to me,” he
said. “Now I run every other day about
five to seven miles.”
Locally, he likes to run at Gearhart’s
Del Rey Beach.
Ter Har and co-author Christine D.
Pollard studied the impact of shoes on a
runner’s lower extremity biomechanics —
actions of the ankles, knees, hips — im-
portant for clinicians to reduce injury.
Footwear is a unique garment that
“affects how we attenuate our forces,” Ter
Har said. “We wear T-shirts, pants and
different clothing items, but none of those
actually supports us like footwear does.”
Justin
Ter Har,
a co-au-
thor of a
study of
running
shoes.
SEEN FROM SEASIDE
R.J. MARX
Any increase in lower extremity
forces can lead to injuries in running, so
researchers look at shoes and see if they
reduce any of the lower extremity forces,
he said. The one thing between our feet
and the ground affecting those forces is
our footwear.”
‘Born to Run’
Ter Har’s thesis offers not only a
mini-buying guide but a history lesson.
In the early 2000s, author Chris
MacDougall’s “Born to Run,” inspired
runners to emulate the barefoot style of
Native Mexicans who could run distanc-
es of up to 100 miles at incredible speed.
Madison Avenue touted the image,
with the introduction of the minimalist
running shoe and claims that a lack of
cushioning would reduce injuries by pro-
moting a more natural foot-strike pattern.
The weekend warrior could opt to run
barefoot or in a minimalist shoe like a
Merrill Glove, with no “heel to toe” drop
and no midsole cushion.
“The goal is to create a natural, ze-
ro-drop experience, so that you can have
full foot contact in a lightweight, but
sturdy design,” Merrell writes of their 12
varieties of barefoot running shoes.
When research on minimalist shoes
failed to show benefits in running speed
or decreased injury risk, their popularity
declined.
The industry pivoted the other di-
rection as the company Hoka One One
introduced a “maximal” running shoe,
thought to reduce the risk of injury with
a highly-cushioned midsole.
“The sweetest cushion” is how a 2016
television ad illustrated it, with “Mal-
lowman,” a giant running marshmallow
in a white padded suit reminiscent of
the Michelin Man, racing all over town
to a doo-wop soundtrack, leaping over
sidewalks and little white dogs.
Surprising results
Ter Har and Pollard sought to mea-
sure the loading force impacts of the
Chart measuring the wear of running
shoes on a runner’s lower extremities —
ankles, knees and hips.
maximal and the traditional shoe.
In the study, 15 female recreational
runners, from age 23 to 51, with a mean
age of 34, ran a minimum of 15 miles
per week. Two shoes were chosen for
comparison: the maximal Hoka One One
and a traditional New Balance.
Participants attended the biomechan-
ics laboratory for two separate testing
sessions, with seven to 10 days between
sessions.
For one of the testing sessions, the
participants wore the neutral running
shoe and for the other testing session,
they wore the more cushioned.
What surprised Ter Har and Pollard
was that lower extremity impacts of the
cushioned Hoka One One were greater
than the traditional shoe, a phenomenon
Ter Har called “totally counterintuitive.”
A higher loading rate has been asso-
ciated with a higher risk of developing a
running-related injury.
Runners should consider this poten-
tial increased risk when choosing shoes,
authors concluded, although further
work is necessary to better understand
the longer term impact of maximal
shoes.
Ter Har wears an Altra Superior 3.5,
with “a little bit of cushion,” considered
a partial minimalist shoe.
Meanwhile, after his June com-
mencement he plans to continue his
studies as a postdoctoral scholar and
graduate teaching assistant.
“I’m interested in footwear in pread-
olescent children,” Ter Har said. “How
an implementation of a minimalist shoe
in children could actually make a large
effect on running-injury risk down the
road.”
hen I was a kid growing up on the Jersey
shore, when I was living with one of my
mother’s boyfriends in a sprawling if
ramshackle house, we had a clothes line strung up on
the side yard May, June, July, and August. It was a
swaying, often sagging, temporary affair; the clothes
pins, which were made of wood, were kept in a
drawstring canvas bag.
Our housekeeper, Marguerite, who started out with
the family as a baby nurse and then stayed on for 20
years, insisted
it on the sum-
mer clothesline.
There was a VIEW FROM
noisy, dented THE PORCH
and
slightly EVE MARX
rusted clothes
dryer on the
glassed in back porch, right next to the washing ma-
chine, but in fair weather, Marguerite craved the smell
and feel of clean, salt air dried shirts and sheets.
Ours was a good-sized household with loads of sum-
mer guests; there was a lot of wash to do and Marguerite
did two loads a day. She recruited my stepsister Mary
Gail, 8, and me, 10, to hang the wash on the line before
we headed out anywhere.
When we returned a few hour later, usually looking
for lunch, Marguerite told us to bring it all in and sort
through it; we brought her the sheets and all of my step-
father’s shirts. She spent most of her afternoons ironing
in front of the TV, watching what she called her “sto-
ries.”
Although she was hopelessly addicted to “Another
World” and “Guiding Light,” possibly due to her for-
mer status as a registered nurse, Marguerite was an
enthusiastic follower of “The Doctors,” and “General
Hospital.” Her favorite, however, was a new soap at the
time called, “Young Doctor Malone,” which she thought
stood apart for its use of actual medical crisis, a charac-
teristic generally missing from her other soaps.
When my husband and I first saw our little house in
Seaside, I immediately was impressed with the sturdy
and permanent clothesline. I realized that with the
outdoor shower and proximity to the Cove, it no doubt
had been created as a place to rinse and dry wetsuits.
Almost as soon as we moved into the house, I began
hanging laundry out on it.
There really is nothing as amazing as climbing into
a bed with freshly laundered, air dried sheets. In my
fantasy life, the sheets, as well as the towels and the
pillowcases, would be freshened every day. When we
lived back East, my husband took his work clothes
to the Korean cleaners who washed and ironed his
shirts. Once a week I picked them up neatly folded and
packed in a cardboard box. As you may have noticed,
there is no such service available in Seaside. The near-
est dry cleaner is in Astoria, for heaven’s sake.
I admit I’m not much for ironing. I ironed my hair
as a teen, but that’s my only attraction to an iron. My
son who washes and irons his own shirts in Portland is
aghast I don’t even own an ironing board. Luckily if I
pull the button down shirts out of the washing machine
and get them on hangers damp, hanging them outside
on the line makes it possible to get away with just iron-
ing them a tiny bit.
EVE MARX
Laundry on the line in Seaside.
Keeping track of library items turns to new technology
n a galaxy far, far away, Mr.
Spock and Luke Skywalker
were walking through the local
intergalactic library when they
spotted a couple of books and tried
to walk with them out the door. But
they hadn’t checked them out yet
and an alarm went off stopping them
at the door! Is this space technology?
How do library staff know? It’s
actually not that futuristic. If libraries
have a radio frequency identification
system, it will set off an alarm
that tells staff exactly what items
Spock and Luke were interested in.
Apparently Luke wanted to borrow
“Vader’s Little Princess” to read to
the new crop of young Jedi, while
Spock was more interested in “Dr.
Spock’s Baby and Childcare.” Hmm,
a new Vulcan family just might be in
I
PUBLISHER
EDITOR
Kari Borgen
R.J. Marx
BETWEEN
THE COVERS
ESTHER MOBERG
his future.
Now this sounds space age, but
if you visited the Seaside Public Li-
brary recently, you may have noticed
something new.
As you walked through the
library lobby and into the main
doors into the library, you may have
noticed there are now three clear
gates you walk between as you enter
into the main library by the circu-
lation desk. These clear gates are
part of the library’s brand new radio
identification system and just like
CIRCULATION
MANAGER
PRODUCTION
MANAGER
Jeremy Feldman
John D. Bruijn
ADVERTISING
SALES
SYSTEMS
MANAGER
April Olsen
Carl Earl
CLASSIFIED
SALES
Danielle Fisher
Skywalker and Spock the gates will
tell staff if items aren’t checked out
properly.
Thanks to the Friends of the Sea-
side Library and the Seaside Public
Library Foundation, the library is
upgrading with the system. This
system has been a long time coming.
One of our current board members
remembers talking about this before
the current library building was built,
which is 10 years ago. Quite a few li-
braries in Oregon have had the iden-
tification system for over 15 years.
For Seaside, the original price tag
was too expensive. But as technol-
ogy and software changed over the
years (and actually got better), prices
dropped and finally with the help of
the library friends and foundation,
we were able to make the purchase.
STAFF WRITER
Brenna Visser
CONTRIBUTING
WRITERS
Skyler Archibald
Rebecca Herren
Katherine Lacaze
Eve Marx
Esther Moberg
Jon Rahl
You may have noticed when you
walk into grocery stores or other
large businesses, every time you
go through their main entrances,
you will pass through similar kinds
of gates. It’s a very close system
to what the library will be using.
Every item is tagged for security and
inventory purposes and when that
item passes through the gates and
isn’t deactivated, it will set off an
alarm. For the library it’s a red light
and a sound. This will alert staff that
we need to check that the items have
been checked out correctly. These
systems use what is called a passive
radio signal, it only activates a signal
when it goes through the gates and
emits far less radio frequency wave-
lengths than any cell phone.
The library hopes to use this
new system for better accuracy in
checking in and out items, inventory
of the Library, and also for security
purposes. We want to make sure
that Mr. Spock and Luke Skywalker
learn the proper way to check out
books. We also hope that the new
system will help you be able to have
more confidence in our accuracy of
checking items in and out. Coding
the entire library will take some
time and please be patient with us if
you see some books missing from
shelves while staff are working on
them.
So come on over, visit the library
and check out the new identification
system. We can’t promise to beam
you up, but we are working on mak-
ing your experience enjoyable here
at the Seaside Public Library.
Seaside Signal
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