Behind the Design: ACG Radical Airflow

Heat is not your friend.

When you’re chilly, you can throw on more layers; when the trail is opening you up to the heavens and roasting you alive, you can only take off so many. Your body is good at cooling itself down at the beach, but ultrarunning is no beach. What if the solution wasn’t just stripping down? What if it was a purpose-built, insane looking layer that held your body’s hand while it cooled off?

We’d tried it before; Nike Stand-Off technology tried to make it work with a material that sat slightly above the skin. But we wanted to push it harder. We wanted to make something that felt like it was actively funneling a mountain breeze over your body.

So we did.

We put a bunch of scientific terms into a box with an Asian pear net, shook it all up, and out came Radical Air. As you move, it funnels ambient air over your bare skin. When the Nike Sport Research Lab people told us about it, we assumed they were exaggerating. When we gave it to Caleb Olson and he won an ultra in it and said it felt like he was walking into a refrigerator, we knew they weren’t.

Along the way, we changed a couple of things based on what our athletes told us. They said “it bunches up near the elbows.” We said ok, consider it done, and added some cutouts. They wanted to be able to see their watches and get to their belts, and we said aye aye, one crop top comin’ up.