Kate O’Neill:
Powering something other than ourselves?
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #3)
Posted February 18th, 2008 at 4:35 PM by Kate O'Neill
Section: Elite Athlete Blogs, Kate O'Neill
Hi, this is my blog in TFS’s Elite Athlete Blog Series. Bookmark http://kateoneill.thefinalsprint.com/ and check back every other Monday for my latest entry as I strive for the 2008 Summer Olympics!
In terms of energy conservation, I like to think that I’m fairly good to the environment. My reality came crashing down on me this morning when I blew a fuse while using both a microwave oven and a panini press at the same time. It took me a second to realize what I had done and then I felt horrified that I was using that much energy just to make lunch for my boyfriend and me.
I felt guilty about it until going for my second run and listening to a “Science Friday” podcast. (“Science Friday” is weekly discussion of the latest news in science, technology, health, and the environment on National Public Radio. My I-pod is filled with pretty nerdy stuff – mostly podcasts and very little music.) Anyway, one of the topics last week was a device that some Canadian researchers have developed to harvest energy from the human body. It looks similar to a knee brace that any of us might wear for a running injury, but this is no ordinary orthopedic accessory! Apparently, when we walk, we lose some energy every time our legs brake from swinging forward to take a step. This device captures that lost energy. Just by walking at a relaxed pace, research volunteers were able to generate five watts of electricity, which is enough power for about half a dozen cell phones. By walking a little faster, they could increase that to 13 watts. Imagine how much more energy we could produce by running! (If you want to read more about this invention, it was profiled in the February 2008 edition of Science.)
The story did not suggest strapping these things onto distance runners so that they could cut back on energy bills (and maybe avoid blowing a fuse?). The researchers still have a lot of tinkering to do and their more immediate goals are that the device could someday be used to power electronic devices while in remote places (which could help soldiers, campers, etc.); to power artificial limbs; and to power medical devices, such as insulin pumps and pacemakers. Those uses seem like much more noble pursuits than helping long distance runners lower their energy bills.
So my hopes of being a better friend to the planet were dashed….but it made me start thinking about my own energy expenditure. It’s hard to think that these tired legs could power anything right now. As I write this, it’s 9pm on a Friday night and I’m propped up in bed with a reading pillow. No exciting nights out on the town for me! The weeks of high mileage and the hours of weight lifting, drills, stretches, and plyometrics haven’t left me with enough energy to even sit up at a table, let alone power a cell phone. Luckily my boyfriend doesn’t mind that I’m so boring because he is busy studying blood for a medical school exam (so, in other words, he is equally boring.) Until moving to Mammoth Lakes, I had never liked taking naps (when I was a toddler and still slept in a crib, I would climb out and trash my bedroom during naptime). I started to appreciate naps more when the altitude began to hit me and now I don’t know what I would do without them! The lifestyle of a distance runner really is not very glamorous – which is fine with me. Glamour is not what I want. Instead I want to run fast times and make the 2008 Olympic team – which requires training hard twice every day and conserving energy in between those workouts. It would be nice to have one of those knee braces so that I could power something other than myself (and feel a little less selfish), but for now I guess I will just have to keep turning the lights off when I leave a room, running the washer machine on cold whenever possible, drinking from my Sigg water bottle rather than plastic, recycling, and switching to fluorescent light bulbs.
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Tags: Biomechanical Energy Harvesting, elite athlete, elite athlete blog series, elite runner, environment, kate omammoth lakes, kate oneil, marathon, olympic hopeful, Olympic Trials, science Friday podcast, summer olympics, team running usa, Terrence Mahon, tfs elite athlete blog series, the final sprint elite athlete blog series, thefinalsprint.com elite athlete blog series, track and field, u.s. olympic track & field trials, u.s. olympic womens marathon trials
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The Final Sprint
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February 18th, 2008 at 5:04 pm[…] To comment on this entry and to send questions & feedback to Kate, please click here. […]
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 pm