Nutritional Revolution Podcast

What If Your Shoes Could Coach You? Inside Avelo’s Smart Shoe Running Tech

• Season 6 • Episode 172

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In episode #172 we talked with Avelo Running founder Royi Metser about:

  • The motivation behind creating a sensor-enabled smart running shoe, and how continuous biomechanical data can reduce injury risk
  • The design and engineering of the Avelo Super Trainer One, and how the shoe's sensor detects ground reaction forces and fatigue patterns
  • The significance of impact, cadence, and terrain in running
  • The future of data compilation from a smart running shoe

Royi Metser is the Founder & CEO of Avelo Running, on a mission to help every runner run faster, stronger, and more resiliently by building the world's smartest running shoe.

Please note that this podcast is created strictly for educational purposes and should never be used for medical diagnosis or treatment.

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Hello everybody and welcome back to the Nutritional Revolution podcast. Today we have for you guys Royi Metser and he's the founder and CEO of Avelo Running and he's on a mission to help every runner run faster, stronger, and more resilient by building the world's smartest running shoe. This is such a fascinating episode. We talked all things about shoe technology and having sensors in your shoes that give you feedback and information. I think this is going to be a very fascinating area and it's safe to say I'm ready to order a pair of Avelo running shoes for myself. enjoy the episode you guys. This was a cool one. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Nutritional Revolution podcast. We have for you guys, Royi Metser Thanks so much for joining us. I've known, yes, Royi and I were chatting. We've known each other for a couple of years now from prior job stuff and working together on some things. So we're excited to talk to you today and learn about a super shoe. I'm like super intrigued by this. I'm like so curious. But before we start breaking down all the nuggets on a cool super shoot, I'm going to have you break down your two truths and lie for me. Sounds good. Alright, so I've got one personal one and then one, actually a couple running-related ones. So first one is that I have three siblings. The second one is that a running step can lead to 10 to 15 times your body weight in force on some of your tissues. And the third one is that pronation causes running-related injury. Ooh. Ooh, OK. Pop quizzing. You're pop quizzing me. Yes. OK. This is good. This is good. I bet our listeners too are probably like, hmm. I feel like I've heard something along the lines of the second one you mentioned. The running step can lead to 10 to 15 times. I don't remember the exact numbers, so there might be a twist in there. But I certainly know that there's quite a bit more force coming down on the tissues. The pronation causes running-related injuries. That is interesting, if that is true. Because I see some people running, and they're running, and the form looks so horrible and terrifying, like they're going to injure their knees immediately. And they can just keep running like that. And I don't understand it pain free. I'm going to go with, I'm thinking maybe there's a number discrepancy with the force generation on the tissues. I'm going to go with that. Maybe it's the lie. But I know there's certainly some force. Curious to hear what it is. I think you might have some siblings. We will find out at the end of the episode these fun facts. Yes. Okay. So why don't you share a little bit about your background and what you're doing now and why we're here talking about a super shoe. Sounds good. Yeah. So my name's Royi, as you said, and I'm the founder and CEO of Avelo Running. So I started working on Avelo almost three years ago. Now it was the beginning of 2023. You and I know each other because I spent seven years before working on Avelo at a company called inside tracker and we worked together there. and so back in 2021, A few years before I started working on Avelo was actually when honestly running changed, changed my life. So it was about a year into the pandemic, into the COVID pandemic. And at the time I was still living up in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm now down in Miami. moved to some nicer weather, but it was the first time that I had found myself unhealthy in my life. And honestly, 30 pounds overweight, which I had, I had gained 30 pounds during COVID and this is not, you good muscle. was, it was from not exercising for a year and from eating pretty unhealthy for an extended period of time. And obviously all the gyms were closed because it was the pandemic and I was working from home and I did a blood test through Insight Tracker. And it was the spring of 2021 and I got some results that were a wake up call for me. Mm-hmm. I had some things I really felt like I needed to change and improve, and I had a biological age that was significantly older than my real age. The test told me I was biologically 41, but I was only 31 at the time. wow. And so I decided at that moment that I needed to do something. And what I did was I went all in, uh, kind of zero to a hundred and I decided to sign up for a marathon a few days later. my gosh. I had run a couple of half marathons before and I loved it. And I had used running in the past as a form of cardio. So as part of my overall fitness routine, I was always lifting weights and playing sports and I loved to run, but this was the first time that I was training for a marathon. And that week I started running. got up off the couch, so to speak. I started training and six months later in the fall of 2021, I crossed the finish line of my first marathon. Nice. Yeah, it was an incredible experience. And it turns out that running is indeed really good for you because I did another blood test and pretty much all of my results moved in the right direction. One of the issues that I've been working on for a long time is improving my cholesterol markers. So I had really high ApoB and really high LDL and all of that moved in the right direction. High triglycerides move in the right direction. I was able to, um, you know, lose some of the weight that I had, that I had put on. I honestly, the most important thing was that I just felt a lot better. And so my health was back on track. and during that marathon, I hit the wall pretty hard around mile 21, which I'm sure you see many of your athletes, especially the ones who are maybe newer to the distance. So I hit the wall really hard. And so I had to walk around the final call it 10 K five K and. Um, I fell in love with running after that experience and after six months of training and all of a sudden running became the form of fitness that I had goals around and I wanted to get better at, and I wanted to get faster and I wanted to conquer this really challenging thing of the marathon and run it faster and not hit the wall. so I ran another marathon a year later. Somehow I finished a few minutes slower than my first one. hit them all, hit the wall again a little bit sooner. yeah. but another learning experience. And all of this really led to fueling my desire to get better, become a better runner. And at the time I was still at Inside Tracker. And at that company, we were building a product that analyzed data, analyzed biomarkers, blood biomarkers, DNA data, wearable device data, and used all of that data to provide individuals with information and insight about their body so that they could make Smarter decisions in their nutrition and their exercise routines and their lifestyle to optimize their health and their performance and ultimately the goal was to help people live a longer healthier life So naturally being in that space I was fascinated about what I could measure about my body to improve and in particular improve my running I Pretty quickly realized that despite having access to so much data. I was wearing a Garmin I had tried sleep trackers like the Oura ring, which I'm still actually using and you know, the whoop strap, you know, I knew my heart rate. knew my HRV. knew my sleep, my stress, my recovery. I felt like I had a lot of untapped potential as a runner and it felt like training for running was this constant game of trial and error. There was still a lot of guesswork and it felt like I had to make mistakes, go through mistakes on my own to avoid them in the future. And the most frustrating thing was that I fell into this really annoying cycle of training and injury. And I kept training and then getting hurt, training and then getting hurt. And these injuries always seem to come out of nowhere. I thought I was doing everything right. Uh, I was following all of the best practices. I even was working with a coach who was great, but I had Achilles tendinopathy. I had a stress reaction in my foot. dealt with plantar fasciitis. And something felt missing. You know, I would wake up one day and I would have pain and it didn't hurt on the run. It didn't hurt after the run, but all of a sudden I would have this injury and I had no clues as to why this was happening. so um I just started asking questions about how I can get better at running and how I can make smarter decisions in my training. And I realized, you know, despite the fact that running is so popular, most of us, when we start to train, when we start to run, We kind of just put our shoes on and we start because it is so accessible. know, really all you need is a pair of running shoes and some shorts and a shirt and you're, you you're off and going, you don't have to go to a gym. You don't really need any ton of equipment. And we aren't really taught how to train properly and run properly. Most of us aren't right. And we kind of figure it out along the way. And I wondered why that is. But fundamentally, I also wondered, you know, I'm measuring all of these things about my body. You know, I've got a watch on my wrist. I'm even doing blood tests, but I'm kind of flying blind about what's happening where running begins. Really where all human movement begins, which is what's happening where my body is meeting the ground, which is at my feet. How am I moving? How is my body interacting with the ground? How is my body experiencing force and generating force? And I wondered why I'm still flying blind about all of these things, about what's happening at the ground, where my body's meeting the ground. And I wonder why my phone and my watch are smart, why I've got a smart ring and a smart car and a smart house, and yet my shoes, which I would argue as a runner, are the most important piece of equipment that I have. Why are they not giving me information? Mm-hmm. about my running. So why are my shoes still dumb? Yeah, behind the times. And I didn't have a good answer. And so I started digging into the space and most importantly, I started reading a lot of papers because being at Inside Tracker, which was a very science forward company, uh I was curious about what the research showed. So I read a ton of biomechanics papers, a ton of physiology papers. And I realized pretty quickly that, you know, and after speaking also with some coaches and some scientists in the space, that there was a tremendous opportunity to harness data that you could get about your biomechanics, about your movement and about the forces that were acting on your body during running. If you went into a lab and did a gait analysis or ran on a treadmill that was instrumented with really expensive sensors. So like a $200,000 treadmill with cameras all around you, but that was not accessible to runners out in the real world. These gait analysis are really a snapshot in time in a very controlled environment. And so the same way that we're now able to monitor all of these data points on a continuous basis, again, my physiological data points mostly, uh I got really passionate and excited about the ability to monitor biomechanics on a continuous basis in the real world, in my real training environment, you know, on the road every single day in different conditions. And I realized also that being able to measure these things continuously held tremendous promise. to provide me and other runners with more information about my training, about my running, that I could use to make smarter decisions to improve my performance, to move more efficiently, and hopefully reduce my injury risk. And so I couldn't get this idea out of my mind. And after working on thinking about it for half a year and speaking with a lot of people, I realized that there was an opportunity to do this. It was 2023 or 2022. The technology was, uh, there, you know, it was technologically feasible. And as, as, uh, athletes, a lot of us are now tuned to measuring things and using that to make decisions. Now there's a, there's another side of that, which is too much of that and sometimes be counterproductive. And I know a lot of us are. sometimes swamped with so much data that we don't really know what to do with. that's certainly a challenge, but uh I got obsessed with this idea and decided to leave my job at Inside Tracker, my full-time job and dive full-time into building a smart running shoe. So that was the kind of background for how I got here. And so for the last almost three years, we've been building Avelo. And what we're building is a smart running shoe, which means that it's a running shoe that's instrumented with sensor and it can measure how you run and it can measure the forces that are acting on your body. And then it connects to an app that translates that information into insight to better understand your body. better understand your movement patterns and the stress and force that you're experiencing, the mechanical stress that you're experiencing, and to use that information to make smarter training decisions. we're almost three years in, we've assembled an incredible team of former Nike executives and footwear designers and developers, incredible engineers. We've got seven PhDs on our team across biomedical engineering, biomechanics, exercise physiology, and we're well on our way to launching this product into the market. I believe smart footwear is inevitable. can't imagine a future in 20, 30 years where we don't have sensors in our footwear, again, to provide us with more information so we can make better decisions and we plan on making that vision a reality and we're well on our way. that's so cool. Yeah, I've heard of like little things that like you think you like to attach them to your shoelaces that like measure some stuff. yeah, never. uh Obviously a smart shoe. So what kind of data can the runners get from their shoe in the app? Great question. Yeah, so there are of course there are foot pods That you can attach to your shoes. So typically you would attach them to your shoelaces There's also been some products that have attempted to make smart insoles Sometimes using pressure sensors as well. I had obviously tried those products and Those products have stayed uh They've been a relatively small segment of the market. In other words, there isn't a large number of runners who are using these technologies. And as a runner, I struggle with them because they added friction to the experience, to the running experience, right? You have this additional gadget or accessory that you have to think about. You have to attach it properly. You have to, if you want to move it on multiple shoes, you got to move it from shoe to shoe. You have to charge it. Yeah. Yeah. got three devices, I'm thinking about charging all the time, right? That's the last thing I need. uh And running is beautifully simple. And so I dreamt of having access to this data, but in a way that was frictionless. And the way that we believe we can make it frictionless is to actually seamlessly embed it into your shoe. So all you have to do is lace up your shoe and start running just like you did before. And it starts tracking automatically. And you never have to charge it. so, so that's why, um, we're doing it this way. And that's why I believe the opportunity, is really exciting. And so we're able to measure a ton of things that you can really only accurately and reliably measure from your feet. And so there's, there's a few core buckets. The first is related to impact. In other words, how much force is your body experiencing every time you hit the ground? So many of us who run, we're measuring what we call physiological stress or load. In other words, we're thinking about our heart rate and we're maybe even using it to guide how hard we train every day. And then we're looking at that and understanding how physiologically stressful was every run, or maybe we're not even doing that. And we're just using our weekly mileage or our weekly time that we're spending training as the proxy for our overall training load. But. Physiological load is only one half of the training load equation, and distance and duration are not a good proxy for the other half, which is what we call the mechanical load. And athletes in any sport experience this mechanical load. Every time you hit the ground, you felt this. you've ever run, there's impact. Your body is experiencing this very stressful force. We call it the ground reaction force. You hit the ground. You're driving force into the ground, obviously to propel yourself upwards and forwards. And the ground strikes your body back with force that can reach, we touched on this a little bit in the beginning, but uh two to five times your body weight globally on your body, but it can reach significantly greater magnitudes than that on certain tissues. And that is the stimulus. That force is a stimulus that damages your tissues, which is the point of exercise. And then if you recover properly, you build back stronger and you get fitter and you can run more and you can run faster. But if you don't recover properly and you apply more biomechanical load than your body's prepared to handle, then you have the capacity for that's when an injury occurs. So fundamentally this biomechanical load is one of the root causes, one of the fundamental causes of both improved performance but also running-related injury. And if you're not able to measure it and monitor it, then you're flying blind to one half of the training load bucket. And so you're really making at best guesses around how much stress your body is under and therefore making guesses about how much you should be training every day and every week to... Progressively overload and improve but not exceed your body's capacity. So we're able It is I agree that I got really excited about it when I when I read biomechanics papers Which you know, they do this in the lab They ground reaction forces in the lab either by jumping or running on a force plate or a treadmill that has these sensors in them But until now this has not been available or easily accessible to athletes in the wild in the field on every single step and so this is one of the things that we can measure by placing a sensor in your Shoot. This makes me think of like so many things like uh I too have dealt with running injuries and yes, and I remember, I mean, I tried different insoles, different shoes. I did the gait analysis and one of the recommendations was like increasing my step count, right? Like trying to be lighter on the feet. Yes, my cadence and uh the point where I would like have a metronome like playing in my head. yeah, so I'd be curious like does this shoe, when you like when you you have, is it testable yet? how do you have a generation that you're test? Okay. So when you play around with it, like is that one of the suggestions it gives you when it's measuring that force too? Yeah, so there's... it's not necessarily that impact is bad because it's not. It's actually good. That's what you want, right? That's why you exercise, to damage your tissues and then they build back stronger. It's more about being aware of how much impact your body is experiencing. So you don't necessarily want to reduce the amount of impact, but you want to progressively increase it. So you don't want to apply so much that you exceed your current capacity. And so that's why it's really important to know how much, first of all, where are you starting? How much is your body currently experiencing? And then you want to make sure that the decisions you're making every day and every week are allowing your body to experience enough impact that you're improving, but not so much that you increase your risk of injury by exceeding your tissue's capacity for impact. And like anything, it's this concept of progressive overload, right? So you want to increase the amount and so that you adapt. rate. you want to give your body a chance to recover and you want to do that over and over again and if you do that properly, if you don't increase too fast, then you should get better without experiencing these setbacks. There are certain interventions like increasing your cadence which have been shown to help not just with reducing injury risk but also with increasing running efficiency and so one of the things that we do is we coach you in real time through audio coaching. We actually do use a metronome. Yeah. set, for example, your target cadence. That's one of the metrics that has been shown in the scientific literature to be potentially beneficial for both of these things, injury risk and running performance. And we help you run, work on improving your cadence. So that's one of the interventions. that's cool. And then I imagine like vert or descent must have a lot to do with impact as well that someone's putting on their body during different training weeks. So this ground reaction force, varies with several things. One of them, of course, is the pace that you're running. So when you run faster, intuitively you generate, you produce more force, but that also means that your body is experiencing more force. Now, this relationship between pace and force, or pace and impact, is nonlinear, which is something that I also discovered when I... dove into the biomechanics literature and something that's not very intuitive to runners. So you running faster creates an exponentially greater amount of impact that your body's experiencing. And so you have to be aware of that. uh Incline and decline influences the amount of force that your body experiences. Downhill running is going to lead to much greater ground reaction forces than uphill running. The surface you're running on, your unique biomechanics. Of course, the footwear you're running in, we control that so we know that if impact is increasing or decreasing, it's not because you wore a different shoe, because you're wearing our shoe all the time, or at least for all the runs that we're looking at. So yeah, these variables all influence it. Wow, this is so cool. So when you came out and created this shoe and kind of test it with yourself, what did you find with yourself personally? I found a lot of things. So, you I've worked on increasing my cadence, but that's honestly cadence is something that you can get from other devices. So that's not necessarily unique to us. So first of all, I've been able to better monitor how much impact I'm experiencing every day and every week. And I've been able to make better decisions about how much honestly intensity and volume to add, but it's the intensity piece that we have to be very careful about because again, there is this nonlinear relationship between the pace that you're running And the impact. So, I became much more aware of how biomechanically stressful running faster really is and making sure that I'm really conscious about how quickly to add intensity and how much, how quickly to progress the faster running that I'm doing. I learned that I'm a forefoot striker, which is not bad or good. you can be forefoot, midfoot, rear foot, you know, those are the three main foot strike patterns. And I think there's some myths that runners have about, you you should run forefoot or you should run midfoot. And it's not really true. You know, you see elite athletes striking rear foot or heel striking, and that's perfectly fine. Actually, the majority of runners are heel strikers. What it does is it shifts the distribution of that force of that load to different tissues on your body. And so what I learned is that as a forefoot striker, my lower leg, is experiencing more of the load than further up my body, further up the kinetic chain. So specifically my calves are working even harder. My Achilles is working even harder. And so that means that I am at a greater risk for potentially injuries like Achilles tendinopathy or plantar fasciitis. And so I need to make sure that I prepare my body for the unique running form that I have, which is I'm a forefoot striker. So I need to be really really proactive about making sure those tissues are strong and prepared for my running. uh And I also learned I have some asymmetries between my left and my right side. So I'm a lot about how I run and making better decisions about my training and my running. Wow. So within the app, from running and then what the app is collecting, does the app give you kind of preemptive suggestions for upcoming runs? Like you've experienced significantly more load this week than you did last week. Modify your run by x. Tell us about that. Exactly. So you're able to monitor how much impact you experience on a given run and also over the course of several runs, so weekly and over the course of weeks. And so we see, we help you see the progression of that overall impact that your body is experiencing. And then the vision is to create a coach on your feet. So the vision is to actually provide recommendations for exactly how much impact you should take on every day and every week and translate that into real training. So. you know, what you should do that day, whether it's an easy run or a workout, how, if you're doing a workout, how much intensity should you incorporate based on how much impact your body is prepared to handle. And so it translates into specific recommendations on a daily and weekly basis to help you make smarter training decisions about what to do every day and every week to keep progressing, but not dramatically increase your injury risk. So I know probably all our coaches are wondering, does this sync with training peaks? Yeah, so we see this as a tool that we want to empower coaches with so that if an athlete is coached, that the coach can actually use this information when they're building plans. They can use this information to guide the planning that they're creating. So we don't sync with training peaks right now, but the goal is to make it accessible to coaches by syncing with training peaks. by even having a tool that's specifically designed for coaches, if they have athletes using the product, that they can use this and have access to the data themselves. Cool. Yeah, this sounds so fascinating. em Okay, I mean, tell us more about the shoes. Like how many do you have available? Where can people find them? Are they strictly for road, trail? Tell us about that. yeah. So we're a small company, obviously we're a startup, so we started with one model. And we started with a road shoe. So that's what we've built, it's called the Super Trainer One. So I've got a... uh can see a picture of the shoe. It looks beautiful. Yeah, we wanted to create something really sleek and fast, but also relatively minimal. Not minimal in terms of like minimalist shoe because it's a relatively... Well, I wouldn't even say it's high stack because today shoes are getting higher and higher back all the time, more cushioned, but minimal in design. So not a lot of big bright logos and too many colors clashing. Yeah. uh And we call it the super trainer because it's uh incredibly versatile. was one of the goals that we had for the shoe. And what I mean by that, because we have one model, we wanted it to be a shoe that you could use for the most variety of runs as possible. So it's using the foams that are found in a lot of the racing shoes today. So what that means is that it's a very lightweight foam, but also highly responsive. There's a lot of energy return. Mm-hmm. So for the shoe nerds out there, it's a TPE blend. It's a super critical foam. And there's a nylon plate in here. So there's a plastic plate that's sandwiched in between two layers of foam. It's still super flexible because it's not carbon fiber, but that also gives you some of that uh repulsive return to... Cool. the plate work together to make a really lively and responsive ride. And so it kind of slots in the middle of the shoe rotation. If you're running in multiple shoes, it's, it's kind of the, the tempo shoe that you can use for easy runs as well. Cause it's very comfortable and cushioned. You can wear it for longer runs. You can wear it for workouts. Some people might even be able to race in it. Although if you want a carbon fiber plated shoe, you know, you would race in a different product. Mm-hmm. So this is the first model we're launching with. We've got a few colorways, four, and we started taking pre-orders earlier this year. So we've sold over a thousand in pre-order and we're delivering the first batch. Our current plan is to deliver in January a small batch to our earliest pre-order customers and it'll be commercially available later in 2026. Amazing. Hey everybody, just a quick break here to let you know that Royi has shared with us a code to use at Avelo Running. So if you go to avelorunning.com / nutritional rev, so that's N-U-T-R-I-T-I-O-N-A-L-R-E-V, you guys will be able to get your Avelo Running shoe. Enjoy and we can't wait to hear about the things you learned from your Avelo Running shoe. Cool. Okay. And so kind of touching back on like the sensor conversation, uh is the sensor, is that where that plastic plate is that you're talking about within the layers of foam? whoa. Cool. This is actually an older version, but the design is not too dissimilar. It's going to be exactly this size. So very thin. It weighs 10 grams, so it doesn't add any meaningful weight to the shoe, really. And it sits uh in a small cavity in the foam, right under the arch of the foot, which is the best location for it, both for accuracy and reliability of the signal. Mm. and also for durability. And there's a sensor in each shoe, so you can get left and right metrics. You ideally never have to touch the sensor, so it's designed to just be there and you don't even really know it's there. Of course, you can't feel it under your foot. We did a lot of hard engineering work to also make it so that you never have to charge it, because it was a non-starter for me personally to require people to have to charge their shoes. Yeah, I think that's huge. we're very smart about when we consume power. So we're using a basic non-rechargeable coin cell battery. And you can get to it if you need to. So you can pull out the insole from the shoe and then you can see the, you can actually see the sensor and you can pull it out if for some reason there's some support that needs to be done, tech support. So you can replace the battery or you can replace it with a new sensor for some reason you have to, although ideally you never will. Mm-hmm. You can also move it from a pair of shoes, a pair of Avelo shoes, to your next pair of Avelo shoes if you're ready for your next pair, just by replacing the battery. So we wanted to also make them reusable as well. Cool. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. Like when someone gets a new pair of shoes, does it you have to move it over or do they have to sync to like a new is it Bluetooth or how does it? Yeah. OK. as you run, first of all, it starts recording your run automatically, so you don't have to open up a separate Avelo app and click a button to start recording your run. You can just start running, and because it recognizes motion, it starts automatically recording the second it recognizes that you're running. And then it stops recording when it recognizes that you've stopped running. Mm-hmm. If you stop during your run, either to take a break or at a traffic light or for any reason, it'll filter those segments out of the running metrics. So it's pretty smart in that way. And then it stores all of the data on the device, on the sensor. You can store up to 20 hours of running data on the device. ah And then it syncs over Bluetooth. So after the run, you get back to your phone. If you don't run with your phone... ah and you just sync all the data from the device to your phone over Bluetooth. We're also streaming data in real time to do the real time coaching if you want it. For now, you would have to run with your phone to get the real time data, but eventually we'll build, for example, a capability to stream to your watch. That's really cool. I think that's a big thing. We have a lot of athletes that use like different sweat test sensors and for the longest time you had to have your phone on you all the time to get the data. So to be able to run without your phone I think is huge. And then I think about a lot of athletes too that don't even have a signal if they're trail running or they're somewhere there's not a signal. Yeah, I think that's a uh big benefit certainly. This is very cool. So Yeah. mean, I also think it makes me think of like use cases for people who do or maybe are prone to stress fractures or have low bone density to be able to monitor the impact that they're getting on the bone to which point where it's, you know, maybe more damaging or they need to be careful and they have maybe a history record where, you know, this much impact equals that's when I got a stress fracture versus, you know, they can know how to progressively reach that point. That's really, really clever. So they can move the sensor around shoe to shoe. And then people can find it on Avelo.com, the shoe? Avelorunning.com. that's our website and you can read plenty more about it there and you can still pre-order the product. Right now it's scheduled to, if you pre-order today, it'll be delivered later in 2026. That's the current plan. Yeah. And you said right now it's a road shoe that can be used in many instances. em Do you think you'll be coming out with a trail or an ultra shoe? That's the goal. Yeah, so the plan is to develop a portfolio of footwear for different occasions. So right now, you know, we've got the super trainer, we will build a racing shoe. So carbon fiber play potentially even lighter. The shoe that we've built is already pretty light in a Typically, the benchmark is in a men's nine. That's the weights that you see, you know, if you go to uh any shoe store or shoe website. we're at about eight ounces in a men's nine, which is already pretty light. So the racing shoe might be even lighter than that. And then we'll also build a non-plated trainer. So some people don't want any sort of plate in their shoe. They just want to be able to run in a... in a non-plated shoe, so we'll build something like that, which is probably more for daily training, ah maybe recovery runs. then trail is obviously a big and growing segment of the running market. Trail will take some more work because, as you can imagine, there's a lot more movement happening on trails, and so the signal is a lot more noisy. Mmm, mhm. take some more work for us to get really accurate and reliable data on trails. We're probably not that far off, but it's just, want to do it right. So you can run on light trail today, but we will definitely have a trail shoe at some point. And that's a really exciting area because I think there's a lot we don't know about trail running. Yeah, definitely, definitely. And yeah, I mean, with all the vert too with, I mean, when you look at these ultras, a lot of them are, I mean, there's a lot of hill climbing and there's a lot of descending and that's a lot of impact and rock navigating and what about like track if someone's doing like a track interval session, could they use the shoes there? Yeah, cool. Yep. We've already got athletes doing that. So we've got a, we've got a few dozen people running in the product right now, giving us feedback on it. Great range of athletes. We had a woman run the New York city marathon in about four hours in the shoes. And then we also had, we have one runner who's running about a hundred miles a week, most of them in the Super Trainer, the Avelo Super Trainer, and training to qualify for the Olympic trials and the marathon in the shoe. So we've got a nice range of runners giving us feedback on the product. That's great. Amazing. so I mean, from a injury risk, I mean, yeah, like we said, like, you're this is what drove a lot of your decision to make this shoe. Is this applicable for, you know, someone who gets shin splints or you mentioned like stress fracture, plantar fasciitis, IT band syndrome, like Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So listen, I want to be really clear about this because running related injury, it's a really challenging problem to solve. We've been trying to solve it for decades. Running became a popular recreational sport in the 1970s, really in the U.S. at least. And in 50 years, We have not been able to meaningfully reduce the rate of running-related injury. If you look at recent papers that have been published, the rate of injury is still well over 50 % of runners get injured every single year. And that's partially because it's a really challenging thing to figure out, right? Like this is one part of the equation, and I believe it's the foundation. If you want to help runners make smarter training decisions, you have to help them understand the training stress, the training load that they're under because... You can't sustain a running injury if you don't run, right? So you have to understand how much training load are you under, but that's not the only variable. I believe it's the foundation, but of course, given what you do, know, nutrition plays an incredibly important role in your performance, but also your risk of injury, hydration, just overall other stress that you have in your life, your biomechanics. So there's a lot of variables that go into it. Mm-hmm. And so it'll take us some time to build super predictive models of running-related injury, but fundamentally, the root cause of every running-related injury is the same, which is you've applied more training stress on your body than your body was prepared to handle. So we're helping you better understand that equation. How much stress is on your body? Because we're helping you better quantify the mechanical stress, and we've developed models with some of the smartest scientists in this field. physiologists and biomechanists to help model your capacity to handle that stress and then make smarter decisions about that. So the idea is to help runners who have experienced any type of injury, ideally avoid them in the future because the root cause of those injuries is fundamentally the same. There are different risk factors for different injuries. So like I mentioned, the way that you run and your biomechanics will load different tissues more or less. So And also your previous injury history will put you at greater risk for some injuries versus others. So right now we're quantifying what's called global mechanical load. In other words, what's the total training load, the total force that your body as a whole system is experiencing. But a future direction is we will be able to quantify the stress or the mechanical load that individual tissues are experiencing. So on a given run, how much bimechanical load did your Achilles experience versus your knee versus your hip versus your... And these are going to help us better understand your risk for specific types of injuries. That's really cool. that's still being perceived like in the shoe sensor based off of how you're landing, where you're landing, what muscles or tendons might be being recruited. Wow. yeah, and that'll take us some time to build those models, but it's feasible That's so neat. Wow. Technology is amazing. Like, what we can do. Out of curiosity, so data storage can last for 20 hours. em Are you noticing any patterns? I don't know you had anybody wear their shoes straight for 20 hours, but from like a fatigue lens, are you noticing any changes in what the shoe is perceiving from their? load and all that. That's one of the really exciting areas where we can provide insight on how your biomechanics, your load, your force, your symmetry, your cadence, your contact time is changing throughout the course of a given run, for example. So, of course, as you fatigue, your form changes, how you absorb and produce force changes. And so we do observe changes over the course of a, let's say, a hard run or a long run in these metrics. And so we can understand when you're fatiguing better. And then, you know, as you're running in the product, over time, we will also observe changes in these metrics, also as the shoe ages, right? Because after two, three, 400 miles, you know, the cushioning properties of the shoe is changing. And right now, we really have no visibility on that when we're running in other shoes. We don't really understand, you know, how has the shoe aged and how is that influencing how I'm running and also the force that I'm experiencing. So these things are all going to be things that we can better provide better insight around. That would be very cool. mean, because, a lot of people are just going off of the tread on the bottom of their shoe. Yeah. I think I feel like you can kind of feel, too, like when you first put on a fresh pair of shoes, like, oh, there's a little bit more bounce. then, yeah, over time that starts to fade. OK, so I want to be mindful of your time here. Let's see, I'll ask you just a couple final questions. good. for our listeners. So if someone's listening and thinking, sounds like the exact shoe I need, what is the best way they can pre-order the shoe? Where can they find it? Yeah, on avelorunning.com. You can pre-order the shoe. You can also sign up for our email list and we'll start to be a little more active in 2026. Right now we're hyper-focused on delivering the first batch and again, we're planning on January, but we'll be announcing things there as well. And for, think we may have covered a little bit of this, but our audience is obviously mostly endurance athletes, marathoners, ultra runners. We also have gravel cyclists, but a lot of our cyclists in their off season start running. a very, yeah, the thing we talk about often is like, is that okay? Or is that normal for someone who's normally on a bike to all of a sudden just go all in on running? Would you suggest a smart shoe for that audience? I mean, I think anyone that wants to better understand their body and have more information to help support better decisions, I think this product could benefit them. So yes, absolutely. And we see it, I think it's important to say we see it as something that supports better decisions, not something that's decision making. So you still need to be in control. rate. but it's a tool that gives you more information about yourself to support those better decisions. So think anyone that wants to understand more about themselves so that they can make smarter decisions could benefit. Cool. I mean, this sounds fascinating. I want to test these out. em Questions on, sure, I know some of our listeners always ask about like drop and like toe box space. Like how would you describe that in the shoe? Yeah, so it's the stack height of the shoe is 38 millimeters in the heel and 30 millimeters in the forefoot. So it's an eight millimeter drop. And then the, intentionally, we were very, very careful and paid attention to the width of the, the forefoot because I personally feel that there's too many running shoes that are too narrow in the forefoot and they constrict the toes and you end up, you know, having your toes kind of sit on top of each other. And obviously that's not ideal, right? You want your toes to naturally be able to splay into your, for your foot to be able to function the way it was designed to function. So I wouldn't say that we're a minimalist shoe. other words, we're not like a Vbrim five fingers, that type of shoe, but, but we've intentionally made it so that the forefoot is nice and roomy and the upper is nice and flexible. And so one of the things that are testers love the most about the shoe is the fit. And one of the reasons the fit is so good is because the forefoot is really nice and allows your toes to splay. Awesome. I love that. Okay, I'm going to jump back to your two truths and a lie so we can hear some fun facts here. So you said you have three siblings, that your running step can lead to 10 to 15 times your body weight in force in some of your tissues and that pronation causes running related injuries. I thought there might be some number fudging on the running step force. Which one was the lie? So the lie, I'm going call it a myth, is that pronation causes running-related injury. There's some misconceptions there around pronation, this bogeyman of quote unquote over pronation. And I think for a long time as runners, we've been sold to this idea that you need to avoid pronation because it's bad and it leads to injury. And that has not been shown in the literature that's been published around biomechanics and pronation. Mm. is a perfectly natural thing that all of us do. You watch some elite runners, they're running really fast and you see their ankle basically like roll all the way inward and they're elite performers and they're running perfectly fine, injury free. And so it's really about understanding what your pronation level is. If you pronate more, that just means you have more range of motion in your foot and your ankle. You might be stressing certain tissues more than if you don't pronate more. If you pronate less, it just means you have a more rigid foot. Yeah. is this natural shock absorption mechanism and we shouldn't be scared of it. It's important to understand it, but it's not necessarily true that it causes running-related injury. I should have guessed that. think that was like one of my, I should have went with my gut there. ah But so, cause I remember, I think one of the things when I had IT van issues was like, went to a podiatrist and they were like trying to give me all these insurance to like change the way, know, yep. ah So running step can create 10 to 15 times body weight in force on some of your tissues. Yeah. globally on your body you experience two to five times your body weight of force But some tissues can experience upwards of 10 to 15 times your body weight on every single step now, you weigh 170 pounds so you multiply that by five or ten Every single step you're experiencing that mount much force and you multiply that by thousands of steps you take on a run and think about how much force your body's Experiencing on a given run. It's a lot. It's a lot That is wild. Yeah. And then like on pavement or versus like descent. Yeah. That's got to be a lot. And you do have three siblings then I guess too, right? Yeah. Awesome. All right. Well, we mentioned it many times throughout the episode where our listeners can find the shoe of AveloRunning.com So we will link that in the show notes for the listeners. Royi has given us a link to share with you guys. So we will put that in there. So check it out, pre-order that shoe, and then the listener or the people who pre-order would get that probably in 2026, saying? Exactly, later in 2026. Yeah, that's the... All right. Any other nuggets you want to share with our listeners before we take off? No, that's it. I really appreciate you having me on. It was great to see you again and reconnect and hopefully it's not the last time we do it. Yeah, I know. I'm I'm sure you're going to develop more nuggets and info and we'll have to have you come back on when you get your trail running shoe and hear about all that. I mean, the data is just we're just going to get more and more data. I feel like the time and research. So, yeah. That's one of the things I'm really excited about, honestly, is, you know, some of our runners are going to opt into essentially research, right? So if you think about what we're doing, we're kind of conducting the largest biomechanics study ever, right? Because biomechanics studies are typically pretty small. And so we'll be able to help advance as a uh sport our understanding of running form, running related injury and how these things are connected. And so that's one of the things I'm really excited about. Yeah, and in real life experiences and in a large age range probably too. A lot of studies are just college student age. yeah, yeah, yeah. running very fast, right? So we'll understand a lot more from a broader population. So cool. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Royi. This has been fascinating. And I'm very excited for your shoe to come out. This is going to be so cool. Thank you so much, Kyle. It was great to see you.

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Kyla Channell, MS

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