Running is one of the best training techniques to increase cardiovascular health, burn fat, boost the immune system, and improve overall body condition. Whether you’re a professional athlete, a strength training enthusiast, or simply want to lose some excess weight, running a great way to achieve your health and fitness goals.
Health and fitness training, however, doesn’t always fit into the busy modern schedule. Between work, family, and social commitments, finding the time during the daylight hours to perform a cardio training routine forces many fitness enthusiasts to run in the dark. Whether or not you prefer running at night time or not, there’s no doubt that it’s more dangerous than running in the day time.
According to statistics released by the CDC, the highest number of pedestrian deaths occur in urban areas, at poorly-lit non-intersectional areas, at night time. Jogging or running after dark is the biggest threat to urban fitness enthusiasts, as rapid movement speed, low visibility, and the lack of awareness associated with listening to music while running is a recipe for vehicular disaster.
Wearing reflective clothing is a great way to improve your visibility on the road or trail and minimize your chances of experiencing an accident, but the best and safest solution is to wear a personal illumination device. The high activity nature of running, however, makes holding a torch almost impossible. Head mounted lights can be even worse for runners, refusing to stay in place and inhibiting free running movement.
A new Kickstarter crowdfunding project, however, is offering a unique solution to the issues presented by running in the dark. The Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights campaign has received over $13,000 in funding from eager backers in the first few days of its $25,000 USD campaign, and is set up to be one of the most successful fitness and training equipment crowdfunding campaigns of 2017.
In this article, we’ll check out the Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights and find out what they are, what they do, and how they do it to help you decide whether the Night Runner Pro campaign is worth backing.
What are the Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights?
The Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights, as the name suggests, are innovative new personal illumination devices that, instead of needing to be held or attached to the body, are mounted on the feet. The Night Runner Pro campaign is the second crowdfunding campaign to be launched by Nighthawk Running LLC, who have refined the design of their highly popular shoe light solution in the latest iteration of their award winning shoe lights.
The Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights can be mounted to virtually any kind of shoe and are designed to help runners ditch unwieldy and cumbersome head lamps. Offering lightweight, comfortable, low-profile, and incredibly bright personal illumination in any situation, the Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights throw out a massive swathe of light that is able to illuminate streets, parks, and trails for up to ten hours at a time, keeping runners safe in the dark.
The Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights are an improvement on the original Night Runner 270 Shoe Lights, which were featured on popular entrepreneurial funding television program Shark Tank.
The original Night Runner 270’s gathered a massive amount of media attention from organizations such as Runner’s World, Gizmag, the Discovery Channel, Good Morning America, and Fox News, and launched on Kickstarter in 2015. The original Night Runner 270 Shoe Lights were a massive success, shipping more than 30,000 pairs of lights to eager backers in more than 41 different countries worldwide.
Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights Design & Functionality
The Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights have been designed with the feedback provided by customers of the first wave of Night Runner products in mind. A vast number of improvements have been made on the design, features, and functionality of the Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights, the most obvious of which is the development of a custom iOS and Android smartphone app.
The app allows users to control a variety of functions such as brightness control, remote switching, and view battery life via a sleek, easy to use interface. In an innovative design move, the app also pulls push notification data from the paired smartphone to deliver “flash alerts” which quickly flash the shoe lights when in use to notify users of call alerts, text messages, and alarms.
The Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights don’t require any straps, belts, or headbands to stay secured. The patent-pending wing design of the lights uses five extremely high energy efficiency super bright 300 lumen LED emitters to alert traffic to the presence of the runner, illuminate the running path, and warn users of incoming hazards.
The Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights improve on the functionality of the previous Night Runner 270’s by featuring 270 degree visibility, which is provided by back and side red LED lights. Instead of using bulky straps to secure the lights around the ankles, the Night Runner Pro’s are instead easily and quickly placed beneath the shoelaces with a secure and effective locking mechanism.
Both of the Night Runner Pro Shoe lights are bilaterally symmetrical, with removable, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that can be hot-swapped out with extra batteries for extremely long runs.
Each battery, however, is able to power the Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights for up to three hours as maximum 300 lumen brightness, or for ten hours of running at 100 lumens. Additional battery packs can be purchased via the Kickstarter campaign page.
Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights Verdict
The Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights are one of the most innovative tech wearable products of 2017, building on the solid foundation created by the Night Runner 270’s and delivering a massive increase in functionality and value.
The Kickstarter campaign the the latest iteration of the Night Runner shoe lights is currently underway- interested fitness enthusiasts can back the project to the tune of $55 USD to receive one pair of Night Runner Pro Shoe Lights, which are expected to ship in Q4 of 2017, worldwide.
