The Adidas Pro Evo 2 Might Be The Best Marathon Race Shoe - First Run Review
The Adidas Pro Evo 2 is a $500 race shoe built for marathons, and despite the price, it might just be the most perfect race shoe on the market. Released in limited quantities, it goes head-to-head with top-tier competitors like the Nike Alphafly 3 ($285), Puma Fast-R 3 ($300), and the upcoming ASICS Metaspeed Ray. Here, we’ll share our initial impressions.
The Adidas Adios Pro Evo 2 might be the best marathon race shoe on the market. That’s a bold statement, but can you expect anything less from a $500 shoe? After our initial testing, we can safely say that this shoe delivers on its promise, offering the best in modern race shoe technology. Whether the Pro Evo 2 is worth its staggering price is another question entirely.
Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 2
The interesting thing about the Pro Evo 2 is that it’s quietly brilliant. Although Adidas’ pricing strategy makes for some eye-catching headlines, the shoe itself isn’t nearly as loud or ostentatious as its $500 price tag would suggest. The Pro Evo 2 isn’t going to blow you away with an explosive trampoline feel like an Alphafly, nor does it have the wild forward propulsion of the Puma Fast R3, but there is no other shoe on the market with this much foam that simply disappears on foot during a run (in a good way).
The key here is the midsole Adidas has crafted. The geometry provides an unrivaled level of comfortable underfoot protection, giving runners 40+ mm of stack in the midfoot—if you’ve run in shoes like the Hoka Cielo X1 and Mizuno Wave Rebellion Pro 2, you’ll be familiar with this tall, cushioned mid/forefoot feel. Unlike those shoes, however, the Pro Evo 2 is shockingly lightweight thanks to its non-compression molded Lightstrike Pro Evo foam, providing the best stack to weight ratio on the market. This formulation is beautifully tuned for long distance running, striking the perfect balance between soft and firm. The overwhelming feeling when running in the Pro Evo 2 is comfortable reliability, which is exactly what we’re looking for when racing a marathon.
In contrast to the distractingly soft Lightstrike Pro found in the Adios Pro 4, (which we found to bottom out during high mileage testing,) we predict that the balanced foam in the Pro Evo 2 will work well for Hobby Joggers of all pace ranges and footstrikes. It’s richly ironic that the least accessible marathon shoe (price-wise) delivers one of the most accessible ride experiences on the market, offering the pinnacle in lightweight, reliable, leg-saving bounce for the marathon distance.
If you have the disposable income to spend on the best of the best for a peak marathon effort, there’s an argument to be made for picking up the Pro Evo 2. More broadly, though, we hope that Adidas continues to trickle down the technology of the Pro Evo line into their mainstream models. Fingers crossed for an Adios Pro 5 with a more balanced version of Lightstrike Pro.
Watch the full first run review here:
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