Calf-mounted LED lighting?

Jon from PDX

Barefooters
Jul 19, 2018
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97
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I’ve been waking up early and going out to run, but have been wary of doing this barefoot due to all the fresh glass (from recycling trucks, perhaps?) in areas that have obstructed street lighting. I have a few LED lights but have never liked wearing them on my forehead. Today I was playing around with a few straps and ended up using paracord to tie a light to my lower calf. It looks not dissimilar to an ankle wrap on a traditionally knotted huarache, just with an LED housing sticking out to the side. I think it might be great: lower angle and further from my eyes means that I’ll see more shadows and so have an easier time reading the ground, while the mount isn’t any less comfortable than a sandal. It even held steady while running in place, although I expect to have to find a way to adjust and retain the light’s angle. As a bonus, if it points up in the sky when I’m landing I’ll know that I’m overstriding.

Nothing came up in searches about this sort of thing, here or internet-wide. I vaguely recall seeing someone make a comment at @Barefoot TJ about an ankle light, but didn’t see anything more about it. Has anyone else here tried something like this? Is anyone interested in hearing about my experiences? I’ll probably give it a try in the next few days, but would love to avoid any known problems and/or share what I find with others if there’s interest.

Thanks!
 
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I debated several ways to mount light back years ago but ended up just putting headlight & taillight on a headband (and/or handheld). Lower to ground would be much better though to reveal the height of object (or local depth perception? for lack of proper term?) since with the light generated near your eyes you do not see shadows of objects, everything looks flat. But anyhow I ended up not running much outside of daylight hours the last several years. Calf mount sounds interesting but I would worry about the constant motion, might make it annoying to run, unless perhaps both calves had fairly powerful lights that were full flood so the area would be somewhat evenly lit even throughout the stride. I had thought of mounting a light lower on a running vest or perhaps a belt, but never experimented. Let us know how it goes.
 
Testing notes, 1st trial:

tldr — I think this is promising, but with a fairly narrow use case.

note — I’m just dumping my initial reactions here. I’ll summarize things once my opinion settles one way or the other, but I figure detailed notes might be of interest to someone at some point, so here you go.

I’m using a Princeton Tec EOS. The headband mount is designed for 1” webbing-like elastic to pass through plastic loops. I threaded paracord through those loops instead and used that cord to tie the mount to my right ankle. The light has three brightness levels plus a blinking setting.

The mount has a hinge on it to adjust the light’s angle. As expected, the hinge will move when running. It didn’t even stay in place for a single step. The hinge appears to be tightened with a screw, so that’s a possible area for future exploration. For this morning, though, I just wrapped the cord around the mount a few times. This held it in place over a ~2.5 mile route.

My second issue was that the light popped out of its mount a block later. I resecured it and had no problems, but perhaps I hit the release lever while tying the cord around it. The light held in place thereafter.

Otherwise, no mechanical problems occurred. The light was completely comfortable, feeling nearly identical to an ankle-wrapped huarache.

The illumination provided by the light closely resembled a strobe. One of the primary reasons I’m trying this is to avoid shining glare at other road users as happens with head-mounted lights. (If anyone knows of a head-mounted light with a shaped beam, I’d be interested.) To avoid glare, I aimed the light perpendicular to my calf; as the calf is most often angled downward during a running gait, or at least a natural running gait, this means the light is most often illuminating the ground under me rather than the ground ahead of me. The period of forward-illumination is brief, strobe-like, and occurs only once per stride. So my main question was whether this intermittent lighting, combined with the unusual angle of illumination, would be enough to enable me to run in areas that were otherwise too dark to safely traverse.

My route was a fairly typical suburban course, including some well lit main roads, some moderately lit residential streets, a poorly lit gravel lot, and some completely unlit sidewalk that has loose debris on top of uneven concrete. I’ve run this course four to five times over the last week or two, in the dark, at dawn, and during the day. This run was conducted about two hours before sunrise.

The light contributed no meaningful sense of extra visibility on well lit surfaces. I had hoped that it would make glass more visible but I didn’t find that to be the case over several patches of both brown and clear glass. So, where visibility is otherwise fine, this light didn’t help with visibility.

(For those who are more concerned about being seen, or who want to literally shine a light on the fact that they’re running in bare feet, this first trial seems to support using a calf-mounted light.)

On moderately lit surfaces, there was only a minimal level of visibility for glass. I was able to see it only one or maybe strides away from it, so I would have to be very present to react that quickly if encountering glass unexpectedly. More common hazards — large debris such as limbs, uneven pavement height — were extremely visible and easy to negotiate. Mild hazards — drifts of leaves, nuts about the size of a golf ball — were visible but were not easy to work around due to the short illumination period. As I spend more time running, though, planning foot placement is becoming more automatic, so working around mild hazards may well become sufficiently easy in time.

On gravel, I was able to see tracks and ridges left by trucks better than I could with either ambient or daytime light. This surprised me and now I want to try minimally technical trail running in the dark with this light. It seems that these larger structures are very well illuminated by an calf-mounted light.

On unlit sidewalk with mild debris typical of fall — the concrete was completely obscured by a thin layer of brown needles, twigs, nuts and such — I was able to run without slowing down at all. Then again, I run very slowly, so that might not be a big deal. When I ran this route before, though, I crossed the street to avoid these patches, so I’d call this a successful outcome.

In most cases, I preferred the brightest setting. The dimmest setting didn’t reach far enough in front of me for my mind to process what I was seeing. However, in constantly unlit conditions (such as on a trail as opposed to between street lights), I suspect the brightest setting would be too bright. Changing brightness settings does require stopping, though, and adjusting the angle requires re-tying the light with my current mount; these are areas where head-mounted lights offer a substantial advantage.

My next trial will be to angle the light up at a higher angle. That should give me longer periods of illumination. I’ll have to find a way to gauge how much glare that causes, though. Further on, I’ll want to do some head-mounted running for comparison and to verify my old dislike for them, and also to find some easy trails to try out in the dark.

Bottom line: this isn’t a perfect solution, and calf-mounts won’t displace head-mounts, but it worked well enough for me to continue experimenting with the idea.
 
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I debated several ways to mount light back years ago but ended up just putting headlight & taillight on a headband (and/or handheld). Lower to ground would be much better though to reveal the height of object (or local depth perception? for lack of proper term?) since with the light generated near your eyes you do not see shadows of objects, everything looks flat. But anyhow I ended up not running much outside of daylight hours the last several years. Calf mount sounds interesting but I would worry about the constant motion, might make it annoying to run, unless perhaps both calves had fairly powerful lights that were full flood so the area would be somewhat evenly lit even throughout the stride. I had thought of mounting a light lower on a running vest or perhaps a belt, but never experimented. Let us know how it goes.
Think Blair Witch Project!!