Runs

“They’re wondering if we just landed from Mars,” one runner says, as a group of about 20 of the world’s top trail runners, wearing futuristic compression gear, barrel past a middle-aged couple out for a walk along a path at the foothills of Mont Ventoux in southern France. The runners chat and joke with each other as they stride across the wide clay trail, but things get more serious once the group hits the more technical sections - rough, rocky singletrack switchbacks snaking up the side of the mountain. The faster runners take off ahead, summit the famously windy 1,900-metre peak in an hour and 45 minutes and zip back down in 1:15.

This is the fourth day of Salomon’s Advance Week, an extensive wear-testing program put on by the Annecy, France-based running shoe and apparel company. For the past three years, Salomon has assembled its top sponsored trail runners from all over the world, along with chief product managers, for a week of shoe and gear tests. It’s an operation like no other, says project manager Patrick Leick, who heads up the company’s “Anticipation Team,” which is charged with developing future generations of trail shoes.

Wear testers this year include six-time mountain running world champion Jonathan Wyatt of New Zealand, Catalonian trail running sensation Kilian Jornet (the subject of the popular Kilian’s Quest videos) and Canada’s Jen Segger, stage-race and ultra trail specialist. The athlete testers cover up to 50K per day, sometimes running three times a day during the week and test out a variety of shoe and gear prototypes. After - or even during - each run, they report back to the product managers and give their feedback, so the developers can tweak the designs and narrow down an array of prototypes to one product.

For running shoes, the process from concept to store shop takes two-and-a-half years, Leick says. His team comes up with original ideas for new shoes and updates to existing models. They produce about 100 prototypes in four different styles and get the testers to see what they like and dislike. If they find a good idea to pursue, they’ll move on to the next stage, narrowing it down to a single prototype, which is again tested and tweaked. If at this stage, they’re not happy with the shoe, Leick says they’ll ditch the whole project and start again from scratch.

For this year’s event, the athletes are testing 2011 and 2012 models, and the Anticipation Team is even working ahead to the 2013 and 2014 seasons. Wear testing doesn’t get much more thorough than this. Near the top of Mont Ventoux, two hours into the day’s run, Salomon Canada team leader Phil Villeneuve and Scottish mountain runner Ricky Lightfoot are busy discussing the finer points of their gear. “It’s bunching up a bit down at the bottom,” Villeneuve says of the compression shorts. “But the calf tights fit much better than last year. And the running packs are amazing. They don’t have any bobbing problems and the pockets are all in the right place.” Lightfoot nods in agreement, takes a swig of water from the hose coming out of his pack, and then takes off down the side of the mountain, back to base camp in the Provencal hamlet of Bédoin.

In a couple of years, the shoes and gear tested here will end up in final form at running stores, ready for the most important product testers of all: you.

Here’s a video of Canadian Running editor Michal Kapral testing out a pair Salomon S-LAB 3 shoes on the way down the mountain.