Marines land at UO, leave with plans to wear Oregon-made trai...( EUGENE Ore. -- (Oct. 10 2007) -- A f...)

EUGENE, Ore. -- (Oct. 10, 2007) -- A few came. They ran. They left. As a result of their August visit the U.S. Marine Corp begins training in 2008 in new running suits chosen after tests of competing products in the University of Oregon's environmental chamber.

The experience was enough to make both the University of Oregon and Beaverton-based InSport Inc. proud. UO researchers were unaware that it was InSport's training clothes that they had recommended until the company announced Oct. 2 that it had won a $14 million contract to produce the suits for the Marine Corps, said John Halliwill, a professor of human physiology and co-director of the UO's Exercise and Environmental Physiology Laboratories.

"The Marine Corps cold-called us and asked us to run tests for them and to report back to them," Halliwill said. "We weren't supposed to know who the suits came from, and, to be honest if someone had mentioned InSport to me last summer I wouldn't have known who they were talking about. But I do now."

Halliwill and lab co-director Christopher Minson led the testing, in which 29 Marines (22 men and seven women) jogged on a treadmill for 30 minutes at 6 mph and at a 2 percent incline on four separate occasions. The climate in the lab was manipulated to mimic two common training periods: either cool and humid early mornings (45 degrees Fahrenheit and 70-80 percent relative humidity) or warm and humid late mornings (55 degrees and 40-65 percent relative humidity).

The UO's state-of-the-art environmental chamber is a 12-foot-square room capable of simulating altitude up to 18,000 feet, holding temperature constant at a set point between 14 degrees and 122 degrees Fahrenheit, and controlling humidity anywhere from 10 percent to 95 percent. The chamber was installed in 2005, built with a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense and a $150,000 gift from Dave and Nancy Petrone of San Mateo, Calif. It can be switched from one
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