Puma Says It Made the Fastest Running Shoe Ever. We Put It to the Test

Nearly a decade ago, Nike’s Vaporfly 4% ushered successful running’s “super shoe” era. With its big-rebound ace foam midsole and c plate, boasting 4 percent ratio gains, that shoe's revolutionary plan triggered a moving footwear arms contention arsenic rival brands adapted the look for themselves. That conflict is inactive raging, and present Puma wants in, with the Fast-R Nitro Elite 3—a hi-tech footwear that it says delivers the biggest gains yet.

It’s a bold claim, but Puma is truthful assured that it offered WIRED entree to its investigating facility, allowing america to comparison the Nitro Elite 3 against different moving footwear brands. To marque things interesting, we decided to comparison it with the elite racer's favorite, the $250 Adidas Adios Pro 4, arsenic good arsenic a mid-priced regular moving shoe, the $140 Asics Novablast 5.

The results were beauteous surprising. And if you’re astir to propulsion for a marathon PR, you’ll decidedly privation to work on.

Record Breakers

The interaction of a bully moving footwear can't beryllium underestimated. With records—both connected roadworthy and track—tumbling successful caller years, World Athletics was forced to alteration its footwear rules successful 2020, limiting the stack tallness of roadworthy contention contention shoes to a maximum of 40mm and a azygous c plate.

But those limitations haven’t stifled the gains. Every marque inactive works wrong the World Athletics constraints trying to nutrient the adjacent game-changing shoe, it’s conscionable present the designers person less levers to pull.

They tin inactive tweak the properties of the gas-injected foams for cushioning, compression, resilience and vigor return. Or fine-tune the stiffness, length, geometry and presumption of the c fibre sheet to heighten the leverage.

Recent shoes, similar the Adidas Adios Pro 4, person experimented with the presumption and curvature—or the rockering—of the midsoles successful a bid to rotation runners into a much businesslike gait.

Weight redeeming is simply a apical priority, too. Studies amusement that for each 100 grams (about 3.5 oz) shaved disconnected your shoe, moving system improves by astir 1 percent. The hunt is ever connected for lighter foams, ways to chopped unnecessary worldly from the midsole, sheet and outsole. Stripped-back uppers besides play a portion with minimal bottommost collars, bladed tongues and barely-there mesh.

Whether you’re targeting a sub-3 oregon sub-5 hr marathon, the lure of the promised show gains is strong. However, the effectiveness of c shoes varies importantly from footwear to shoe, and runner to runner.

Research indicates that portion immoderate runners acquisition improvements successful moving system with caller footwear tech, others spot minimal benefits oregon adjacent a diminution successful performance. Individual biomechanics, moving speed, and adaptation to the shoe's plan each play a important role. The cardinal is uncovering the footwear that you respond to.

The mixed results mean we’ve not seen immoderate rival claims to vie with Nike’s archetypal 4% stamp. Until now.

Puma says the caller Fast-R Nitro Elite 3 not lone unlocks ratio gains that outperform immoderate different footwear connected the shelves close now. But it’s besides a moving footwear all runners respond to.

Tried and Tested

It sticks with the classical super-shoe recipe: a high-rebound, nitrogen-injected foam, a afloat magnitude c plate, incredibly lightweight uppers and a precise bladed furniture of outsole rubber. But successful immoderate ways it cuts a unsocial signifier with a decoupled midsole, a steep bottommost cutaway that saves value and an extended c sheet that lips retired astatine the beforehand for further leverage.

The changes from the Puma Fast-R2 to the Fast-R3 are subtle, but Puma promises they marque a difference. Zeroing successful connected the details that unlocked the improved ratio required a caller plan attack inspired by Formula 1’s integer prototyping. Nowadays, tweaks to F1 cars are often modelled virtually, alternatively than physically connected the track. Puma fundamentally applied a akin integer modelling attack to its moving footwear development.

“We 3D recorded the ft onslaught of 15 athletes running, past utilized a machine to mean them retired and crook them into one,” says Todd Falker, merchandise pb for moving astatine Puma. “We could past instrumentality that integer ft onslaught and ticker however the ft of each the runners interacted with the integer shoe.”

Romain Girard, VP of innovation astatine Puma adds more. “We replicated runner behaviour successful a 3D world, but the replication is 100 percent accurate. The mode the footwear behaves successful world is precisely the aforesaid successful the machine simulation.”

The exertion not lone allowed designers to place parts of the footwear that weren’t being used, for illustration 5.2 percent of the measurement of the midsole foam had nary impact. So that was cut. But it enabled designers to “test” 100s of antithetic plan permutations without having to spell done the lengthy process of creating tons of carnal prototypes to retest connected runners.

“Usually you request to physique 1 plate, a 2nd plate, a 3rd plate, and past you trial them,” says Girard. “But we were capable to trial hundreds of plates and configurations digitally until we had a mates that were looking better, and past we had to marque a decision.”

“We did this connected a foam level, connected a sheet level, connected traction level, connected the feet level, truthful we could optimize the full merchandise from the 2nd procreation to the third.”

This plan process informed each item of the caller shoe, helping Puma chopped 100 grams from the erstwhile generation. The Puma Fast-R3 present weighs successful astatine conscionable 6.2 oz oregon 176 g successful a US men’s 9.5—one of the lightest moving shoes going.

The ace foam successful the Puma footwear returns much energy, too—90 percent compared to 85 percent from the PEBA foam successful the likes of the Nike Vaporfly.

“The merchandise that you spot here, is the archetypal carnal prototype that we built aft this integer optimization,” says Girard.

“Basically what the machine said would work, works,” adds Falker.

It’s got probe to backmost it up, too. Once the Fast R-3 was finalized, Puma commissioned manufacture specializer Wouter Hoogkamer—the aforesaid idiosyncratic who wrote the archetypal Nike Vaporfly 4% paper—to trial the moving ratio benefits of its caller shoe.

Hoogkamer’s squad enactment 15 volunteers, each of whom had tally 5km successful nether 21 minutes (that’s beauteous quick, the mean is person to 30 minutes), successful assorted starring c shoes, to trial their moving system successful a bid of treadmill tests.

The results showed that connected average, the Fast-R Nitro Elite 3 offered 3.5 percent ratio gains implicit the Nike Alphafly 3 and the Adidas Adios Pro Evo 1. In fact, it offered improved moving system against each footwear connected test, including its predecessor, the Fast-R2. But what’s adjacent much surprising, is that each of the 15 runners were their astir businesslike successful the Fast-R3.

"The astir striking effect from this survey was the consistency of the moving system improvements,” says Hoogkamer, who is besides an adjunct prof astatine the University of Massachusetts. “For each azygous subordinate the numbers showed that moving was easiest—requiring the slightest magnitude of metabolic energy—in the Fast-R 3.”

“We’ve ne'er seen immoderate different footwear bushed this [the Fast-R 3] connected immoderate idiosyncratic successful the lab, afloat stop. The slightest [response] has been astir 2 percent,” adds Falker. “But connected average, we're astir 3.5 percent percent much businesslike than the largest and 2nd largest footwear brand’s champion shoes.”

Sweat Test

Brands don’t often invitation adjacent examination with rival brands but numbers similar those from Hoogkamer’s survey mightiness explicate wherefore Puma threw unfastened the laboratory doors for america to trial it for ourselves.

The squad astatine Puma’s Nitro Lab enactment maine done the aforesaid trial utilized for Hoogkamer’s study—something called a moving system test. This trial is commonly utilized to benchmark the interaction of moving shoes connected show and measures oxygen usage to quantify the effort required to tally astatine a fixed speed.

“The little oxygen you use, the little your moving system and the amended your moving efficiency,” says Laura Healy, elder manager for probe & athletics subject astatine Puma.

“Running system savings tin straight construe to moving performance, meaning you tin tally faster for the aforesaid magnitude of energy. In theory, if we tin marque you much businesslike with our shoes, we tin marque you faster.”

The Puma probe squad strapped maine into an oxygen speech mask, a spot similar those often utilized for VO2 Max tests. After an obligatory Bane impersonation and a 10 infinitesimal warm-up connected the treadmill, I was asked to support a bid of 5 infinitesimal efforts, moving astir 10 seconds slower than my people marathon gait successful each of my trial shoes.

I ran doubly successful each one, reversing the bid connected the 2nd set, with 2 minutes remainder betwixt each effort. During the runs, the squad measured the magnitude of oxygen I utilized and c dioxide I output. The results from the 2 tests were past averaged and compared.

The Results

While I was secretly hoping my underdog, the mid-priced Novablast 5 mightiness nutrient a daze win, from a subjective perspective, the Adidas and Puma shoes felt much efficient. I besides felt much earthy successful the Puma shoe, but that was a overmuch person call.

My results followed the findings of the University of Massachusetts study. I was 4.9 percent little businesslike successful the non-plated Asics Novablast 5. I was besides 2.23 percent little businesslike successful the carbon-plated Adidas Adios Pro 4.

In the satellite of elite, oregon so superior amateur, running, those are important numbers. While the ratio gains don’t construe one-for-one into clip savings, the ratio improvements would mean a theoretical show summation for a fractional marathon of adjacent to a infinitesimal and fractional (from 1:22:00 to 1:20:37) oregon 3 minutes knocked disconnected my marathon clip (from 2:54:00 to 2:50:58).

Of people there’s much to moving a PR than the shoes you bash it successful but, with each different things successful balance, those are large imaginable clip savings.

The Real World Test

Boosting ratio connected a treadmill successful a laboratory is 1 thing, but it’s different to reproduce that show connected the feet of existent runners taking portion successful existent runs. But aboriginal tests successful the chaotic are surely affirmative for Puma.

At the caller 2025 Boston Marathon and London Marathon, Puma enactment 180 runners successful its Fast-R3, and much than a 3rd of them bushed their erstwhile marathon records. That inactive means much didn't than did, of course, but it's notable that 38 runners bushed their times by much than 3 minutes.

In a somewhat little prestigious test, this WIRED guinea pig knocked 12 seconds disconnected their 5km PR, moving 17:41 astatine a London parkrun. I besides enactment the Puma supershoes done my own, much thorough, real-world introspection astatine the London Marathon.

The shoes undoubtedly worked, albeit possibly excessively good successful the archetypal half. I finished with a clip of 2:58:57—that's 4 minutes slower than my marathon PR, but connected a precise blistery day. Also, if you cognize thing astir marathon pacing, you’ll cognize it’s a unspeakable thought to tally a fractional marathon PR successful the archetypal fractional of the marathon. Which is precisely what I did. I besides threw successful a 10-mile and a 30KM PR successful that mix. I can't beryllium it, but I deliberation immoderate of that was down to however beardown I felt successful the Puma shoes.

Looking person astatine my stats, I held PR gait up to the 19th mile earlier dropping off. Even successful the past 6 miles, the smooth, snappy feedback from the Fast-R3 helped maine bent connected erstwhile it looked similar sub-3 mightiness beryllium lost.

I reappraisal a batch of the champion moving shoes, and I person nary hesitation successful saying the Puma Fast-R3 are the existent deal. Light, punchy, propulsive and crucially comfy implicit the afloat 26.2 miles, adjacent erstwhile things aren’t rather going according to plan. If you’re chasing a PR, this footwear should beryllium connected your database to consider.