I Ran a Marathon in the World Record Race Shoe | Adidas Pro Evo 3 Race Review

Bada boom, bada bang, bada bop. We are back today with the Adidas Pro Evo 3, the $500 race shoe, the sub two hour marathon shoe, also the winner of today's race. So Adidas had a clean sweep at the Berlin Marathon on both the men's side and the women's side. All the men were wearing the Pro Evo 3 and Tiggs Esefa, who was going for the women's world record, ended up setting the Berlin course record in this shoe. And I also wore this shoe for my sub 2.30 today, 2.29 marathon in it. Today, I'll do the full race recap. Tomorrow or later this week, we have the entire race weekend vlog, but I just ran a marathon today and I was doing events and a whole bunch of stuff throughout the rest of the day. Also just hanging out and having some fun. So I wanted to give a review on how this shoe was for the race. Performance review of the Pro Evo 3. So headline here, this shoe is absolutely fantastic, which I'm sure you already knew because it set the world marathon record earlier this year, but it is a super light shoe. So if you're not familiar with the specs, this is under 100 grams, the $500 race shoe here. I think it's 97 grams in the sample size nine. I weighed my pair when I was about 110 grams. Super light and the foam underfoot is very bouncy. Now, the other thing that is different about this shoe versus the traditional race shoe, it does not use a carbon fiber plate. So, or it does use a carbon fiber plate, but it's carbon fiber, but it's not a plate. It's more of this J shaped piece, this energy rim. You can see it goes around the shoe right here, this energy rim that's only on the outside of the shoe, like a horseshoe. So unlike a traditional super shoe, you don't get that super aggressive plate feel. So the ride for this today, yes, it's super fast, but it's also so soft and comfortable. That's the unlock with the Pro Evo 3. A lot of the fastest race shoes and what I've been racing in, I think three out of my last four marathons, other than today, were in the Fast R3. I used the Leaning Fadian 6 Elite earlier this year, which is also soft and fast, but the Fast R3 is all plate. The toe-off experience of that shoe is so stiff, so harsh. It is 100% carbon on the forefoot. Literally, the carbon extends out from that shoe and it's designed to give you that aggressive bite feel. This is the opposite. You do not feel the plate on this because it only goes around the outside of the shoe. So that is the unlock with this. You get more foam under the foot. You get actually 10% more foam, at least in the Adios Pro 5, they said 10% more foam. I'm not sure how much in this, but the plate is about four or five millimeters in here. So you take out that four or five millimeter chunk of plate or metal under your foot, you add in more foam. So on one hand, I was actually worried the shoe was gonna be too soft later into the race or it wouldn't feel the best, but I mean, this was just absolutely fantastic. Very even the way that I ran today, and this shoe could hang for the entirety of the race. Now, my other concern with this shoe is it's not designed for a 2.29 marathon. And I know that sounds like a fast time, but this is really designed for a two hour marathon or a 2.20 marathon. This is designed for the fastest of the fast. And of course, you should be able to run a 2.29 marathon, but when they put a product like this together, it's so that Sawe and Kijelce and Tiggs de Cefa can run some of the fastest times in human history. It's not for a hobby jogger like me to go out there and run a sub 2.30, but for that distance, it actually did not feel too bad. The only time where I was feeling like, maybe this does not have enough support, it was mile 20 or 21, it was one turn. And I started getting a little bit worried that the back was getting slippy, but I really ended up not having very many issues with this shoe at all. Now, ride experience, so compressive, so soft, so light. It's just extremely easy to turn the shoe over. And with a lot of the lighter weight shoes coming to market, one of the benefits I found is how quickly you can shift gears or shift pace. Dropping down from a 540 to a 520, it feels effortless in something like this. There really is such a big difference shedding that 100 grams of weight to get something down from a 200 gram point to a 100 gram point, where the faster that you're going, the easier it is to just pick it up. It felt like I wasn't putting a lot of effort to run in the 530s, and I even threw a mile in today in the 520s. It made it feel like I wasn't working as hard as I would have had to in something else. Now, it does lose some of that aggression on the forefoot, but because the foam is so good, I wasn't missing a plate feel. This is all about the foam experience. So how this shoe is made is it's uncompressed foam. So it's cut out of a big piece of foam versus traditional foam. It's injected, or it's chemically processed, and it's created in a mold. With this one, they actually cut it out of this gigantic block. So it's a totally different manufacturing process. It's a lot less durable. It's not designed to be a shoe you put a lot of miles on. It's basically a single-use shoe. I will not run a marathon in this again. I'm trying to get a fresh pair for my next marathon because it is just so good, but it does have different properties because of that. The last version of this was actually very firm. I didn't like it all that much, but today, this thing was just a beast. In my first workout in this, I thought it was really good too. Now, one weird quirk of this foam, take a look at this. It's almost like a sponge in how it soaks up the dirt from the road, and you can't wipe it down because it's this uncompressed material. It has this rough feel to it, this rough sheen, and it just soaks up the dirt. So for comparison here, take a look at this. This is my Evo SL. This is what I've been wearing pretty much all around Germany, and you can see it looks kind of dirty. I mean, it's a little bit dirty, but a foam like this isn't gonna soak up that dirt and be a sponge for everything on the ground. So just kind of an interesting thing. Now, some other things, upper. So in my first run review of this shoe, I was complaining about the upper. I just said it didn't feel like my foot was secure in it. Honestly, I had no issues with that today. I just cranked down the laces super tight and I wasn't sliding around at all. I was looking down a few times to make sure that the laces were still tied, and they were, they didn't come untied. But other than that, I really had no issues with it. It is super lightweight. I compared it in the first run review to a grocery bag or one of those vegetable bags that you get at the grocery store, and I would still, after today, say the same exact thing, but it's designed to be lightweight and it does a great job at that. Now, in terms of downsides of this shoe, they're really all related to the shoe's purpose and construction. To get something to be this lightweight, there are necessarily compromises made. So one of those is price. This is not a mass market product. They have to manufacture it in a very specific way that you cannot do at scale or it just, it won't be a profitable thing to do at scale also because people won't buy them in the numbers it would need to make sense to do a bunch of runs of these. And then also to get it to be this weight, this lightweight, you're not engineering it for longevity. You're engineering it to be the fastest possible product for one single race. So those are really the only downsides, but in terms of the actual ride experience, just incredible. And if you are someone who is training hard for a PR and you want the absolute best of the best for one race, I cannot recommend this thing enough. I'm gonna try to get another pair for Chicago. Maybe Adidas will give it to me. If not, I'm gonna try to see if I can buy one somewhere. I actually did buy this one myself, so I will do that again if I need to, but just super impressive. The last thing that I wanted to say is this is very clearly a development product, a concept product, an innovation product. I love that Adidas put this out. I wanna see more brands do that. I wanna see brands bring these products to life that are just super cool and that aren't mass market and that are niche, but that are pushing the boundaries of what's possible. And we see it occasionally, but I mean, the hyper shoe, that's the new thing. I would love to see every brand drop something like this and keep chasing that next frontier. So it'd be cool to see what comes next in this category. I know Sockini's working on a hyper shoe. I know Mizuno's working on a hyper shoe. A lot of people asked me if I could go check that out this weekend, but I just didn't have time. I was pretty much schedule packed. I was only in Berlin yesterday, pretty much yesterday and today. Yesterday, schedule was already completely packed, so I didn't see it, but I know Mizuno is working on a hyper shoe that's pretty much the exact same weight as this. So this is the new frontier in racing shoes, bringing the weight down. And then I don't know if Adidas has a patent on this plate and this tech, but it would be really cool to see other brands try to do something to remove that aggressive plate feel. Because if you can remove that plate bite, that aggressive feel, but still give you something fast, I mean, that's beautiful. Comfortable, but fast. That is the golden goose. That's the white whale. I'm putting all sorts of colored animal metaphors together. It's the orange fox, baby. That's what you want. That's the grill. You want something to be comfortable and fast. And that's pretty much what the marketing for every single super shoe says. Oh, it's comfortable, fast. This one really is comfortable and fast. One of the softest foams out there, but then also one of the lightest weights and most, the highest energy returning compounds. Just a truly special shoe. I had a ball running in this today. And that's the other thing. Sometimes speed and running fast can feel mechanical or painful or like you have to run in a certain style. This one was just really fun to run in. It's like the Sockety Endorphin Elite 3, if you're ever running that shoe. Just a very soft and bouncy and fun shoe to run in, but super fast. So they nailed it with this. It's not gonna be the shoe for everyone. Of course, the stability is not great. It's not a shoe that's designed to go hundreds and hundreds of miles. But if you want a one race shoe that's gonna be amazing for a PR attempt, I cannot recommend this thing enough. So that is all I have for you today. Full race recap coming tomorrow or later this week. I appreciate you and I'll be back tomorrow with another video.