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Before the Nike Vaporfly 4% and NEXT% came along, you would see a range of shoes being used by runners at the sharp end of marathon racing. However, if there was one shoe that did stand out as more popular than most, it was the Adidas Adizero Adios. The shoe was used to set many world records, including the recent marathon gold standard of 2hr 2min 57sec, run by Dennis Kimetto in the Adios 2 in 2014.
That time, along with many other records, has been obliterated in the past couple of years by athletes wearing the a Nike Vaporfly, which has a carbon plate in the midsole to help propel runners forward and run more efficiently.
To tackle Nike’s dominance, Adidas has launched its own shoe with a carbon plate – the Adizero Pro. Along with the Carbitex carbon plate in the midsole, the shoe uses Adidas’s Lightstrike foam to keep the weight down.
There is also some of Adidas’s durable Boost foam in the heel of the shoe, and Adidas has stuck with hard-wearing Continental rubber on the outsole, which again should help the shoe last a bit longer than some rivals – the Brooks Hyperion Elite marathon racer, for example, is only slated to perform at its peak for 50-100 miles (80-160km).
A prototype of the shoe was used by Mary Keitany at the 2019 New York Marathon, and you can expect the Adizero Pro to be used by all the top Adidas athletes in the major marathons and at the Olympics this year.
The shoe will be available from 1st April and has an RRP of €180. That converts to around £150 and though it’s unlikely Adidas will convert the price to pounds exactly, we expect the Adizero Pro to be significantly cheaper than its rivals. The new Nike Alphafly, the successor to the Vaporfly, has a price of $300 (which is around £230, but again expect a higher UK price), the Vaporfly NEXT% is £239.95, and the Brooks Hyperion Elite will be £210 when it goes on sale on 1st March.
Whether the Adizero Pro can break Nike’s dominance at the sharp end of marathons is yet to be seen, but it’s certainly one of the most exciting shoe launches this year. We’re hoping to put the shoe to the test soon to compare it with the Vaporfly in a full review.
