Hmmm. San Fransicko, marathon runner, carries poles for protection. Left wing nut job comes to mind. If he cared anything at all for wildlife, he would’ve let the coyote have at him.
No. The poles are for stability, a faster pace, and balance especially on difficult terrain, not protection.
I have always carried hiking staves or walking sticks on the trail from childhood, leading to a 20 year argument with my father. Who just happens to have a Ph.D. in kinesiology (the study of human motion), with sports physiology as his primary focus. He conceded my points about the utility of poles in marshy terrain and when on steep descents, but said the bottom line is it was dead weight otherwise.
Finally one day in my 20’s I was working at Ford Motor Company and I got an email from him. It contained an abstract of a study some people in his field had done in which it was found that hikers with walking sticks could maintain a 7% faster pace and reported lower reported levels of exertion, despite higher overall metabolic activity. The explanation was that work was being distributed more evenly throughout the body since the arms could help propel the hikers forward. At the bottom my father simply wrote “I concede.” :-)