Adam, our first male OESH Ambassador, and former OESH intern, just sent us this photo of him jumping over fire near the finish of the Spartan Race held in New Jersey earlier this month. Never mind that Reebok sponsors the race…Adam proudly wore his OESH La Vidas and EVERYBODY was asking him about them.
OESH La Vidas can take the heat.
Adam is a third year at Princeton University, majoring in mechanical engineering. He grew up near the OESH factory and went to Charlottesville High School, where, in addition to excelling academically, was the star of the cross-country team. He still runs but his main athletic commitment now is for the Princeton Crew team, which during its off-season, entered this Spartan race and took 4th overall – not bad!
As an intern in the summer of 2012, Adam built a foundry for OESH. Yes, a real, honest to goodness, red-hot foundry, that we use to melt down aluminum cans, construction waste, old lacrosse sticks, and anything else laying around our dumpster, into cast blocks, that we use to make tools and shoe-form mold bases. Any waste from our factory, including testing and prototype pieces go back into the foundry to make more useful things. If all goes well, the work Adam did in building and refining the foundry will become his honors thesis at Princeton.
While Adam is famous around Charlottesville and Princeton for his foundry, he’s also famous for what he wears and doesn’t wear on his feet. Up through high school he was mostly barefoot. In 2012, he wore OESH Athletic Sandals as he helped design and make them (hence the name of one of the models, “Tigers” as in the “Princeton Tigers.”) But since this summer he’s been pretty much living 24/7 in his new OESH La Vidas.
This is what Adam had to say about the race:
“It was at a ski resort and the race course was eight miles straight up and down the ski slopes and through various constructed obstacles. I wore my La Vidas, of course, and they performed admirably—super light (even soaked with mud and water) with good traction on some very adverse surfaces. Princeton Crew was the fourth team overall, and I placed 78th of 5429. Unlike last year’s marathon sans OESH, the next day I was tired but not very sore, and the arches of my feet were fine (as opposed to destroyed). Very grateful for that.”
“Also, they never came untied during all of that abuse, and they cleaned up beautifully— all the mud came off in one wash cycle!”
Well there you go. We at OESH are proud to have Adam represent us, all the while, being his awesome self.
