By Christopher Cudworth

A bin of Martian-made running shoes shows the diversity of products these other-earthly beings have made.

A true connoisseur knows of whence I speak. A new pair of running shoes can set all the right and wrong nerves quivering with anticipation. You try on several pairs and even buy one or two, then take them home in a box where you set them aside until you can find the time to really take a look at what you’ve bought.

Running shoes deserve this sort of attention. Especially these days. With prices now set well over $100 for even the most basic shoes–of which there really are none anymore–it is forgivable for a shoe slut to cast admiring eyes on the product, taking in the elaborate gluing and stitching that goes into modern running shoes.

Like jewels

Some pairs of shoes are like expensive jewelry, seemingly honed from materials drawn deep from the earth. Other shoes are more like an industrial miracle, fabricated by a hidden band of Martians somewhere in Site 52. That’s actually where many of our running shoes do come from these days. If a shoe says Made in America what that really means is that those shoes are being manufactured far underground by a somewhat bored group of nearly immortal space beings, Martians mostly, that knows how to heat form rubber and slap on logos with the best of them. That kind of technology is what enabled them to survive underground all these years on Mars.

Sponsoring the Martian Marathon

Which by the way will be the site of the Martian Marathon. You can register for the race at http://www.martianmarathon.com. Entrants get a complimentary oxygen tank and a hazmat racing suit to fend off violently dangerous ultraviolet rays, especially those in the red spectrum, which have been known to otherwise melt unprotected human flesh. Of course, given the gravity variance on Mars a person who normally weighs 100 lbs. only weighs 38 pounds, which means the marathon distance will be expanded by approximately 62 percent. Please remember to adjust your split times.

Site 51 is now a shoe factory

The government had to give the Martians something to do, you see. The technology they otherwise have to offer might be too advanced for us human beings to utilize at this point. A leaked document on the Internet proposes that the Martians offered us a technology to create cars propelled by a group of magnetic cords wound up like DNA that could allow vehicles to go 500 miles without need for gasoline, natural gas or even hydrogen. The advanced magnetic engine would completely eliminate fossil fuel usage in America.

Trouble is, the Martians proposed their new brand of new cars during the Bush-Cheney era, and that would have dropped Dick Cheney’s energy stock values too low. So Cheney had the Martians locked away deep under Site 51, consigned to making fancy running shoes as punishment for their transgressions against Cheney’s precious Halliburton stocks. So the Martians got sent deep into a cave to make something Dick Cheney would never consider wearing, which is running shoes. As a compromise, the Martians then offered to fix Dick Cheney’s busted up old heart to which Cheney replied, “Leave my heart out of this matter. That’s been my policy for years and I’m not going to change it for some namby pamby bunch of Martians.”

Martians play jokes on runners

The Martians are a little bitter about the whole thing, as you can imagine. So they’ve been playing some interesting little jokes on the running community as a whole, including introduction of all those minimalist running shoes and the really stupid-looking models with 5 toes showing. It is reported the Martians are literally lying on the floor laughing their high-pitched Martian laughs, barely audible through the Methane tanks through which they breathe, yet audible just the same. They think it’s really funny that Earth People are waddling around the streets running as if they’ve just had a Martian probe stuck up their ass. The Martians conduct constant YouTube searches for minimalist runners because it just sets them off, laughing uproariously. Here’s one of their favorites, in which some guy sits there holding up the goofiest looking shoes on earth, talking about them as if they were products sent down from heaven.

Here at We Run and Ride, we just want to keep you up to date on the latest developments in running and riding gear. Next week, we’ll fill you in on the fact that underneath their shiny latex swimming suits, whales, dolphins and seals are actually as hairy as grizzly bears. Scientists are working on ways to make underwater shaving kits so the animals will no longer need to squeeze into their constrictive underwater swimming suits, which really hurts their fertility, hence the fading populations of cetaceans in general.

That’s all the serious news for this week, folks. Tune in next week to learn about a woman who invented a jogbra that can act like a high-powered slingshot if a female runner finds herself in a scary situation. The product is called the Boobsling and is available for $19.95  at the Seen On TV website. You don’t have to thank us. We like reporting this stuff.