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 creation triggered a moving footwear arms title arsenic rival brands adapted nan look for themselves. That conflict is still raging, and now Puma wants in, pinch nan Fast-R Nitro Elite 3—a high-tech footwear that it says delivers nan biggest gains yet.

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

The results were beautiful surprising. And if you’re astir to push for a marathon PR, you’ll decidedly want to publication on.

Record Breakers

The effect 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 nan stack tallness of roadworthy title competition shoes to a maximum of 40 mm and a azygous c plate.

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

They tin still tweak nan properties of nan gas-injected foams for cushioning, compression, resilience, and power return. Or fine-tune nan stiffness, length, geometry, and position of nan c fibre sheet to heighten nan leverage.

Recent shoes, for illustration nan Adidas Adios Pro 4, person experimented pinch nan position and curvature—or nan rockering—of nan midsoles successful a bid to rotation runners into a much businesslike gait.

Weight redeeming is simply a apical priority, too. Studies show 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 trim unnecessary worldly from nan midsole, plate, and outsole. Stripped-back uppers besides play a portion pinch minimal bottommost collars, bladed tongues, and barely-there mesh.

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

Research indicates that while immoderate runners acquisition improvements successful moving system pinch caller footwear tech, others spot minimal benefits aliases moreover a diminution successful performance. Individual biomechanics, moving speed, and adjustment to nan shoe's creation each play a important role. The cardinal is uncovering nan footwear that you respond to.

The mixed results mean we’ve not seen immoderate rival claims to compete pinch Nike’s original 4% stamp. Until now.

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

Tried and Tested

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

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

“We 3D recorded nan ft onslaught of 15 athletes running, past utilized a machine to mean them retired and move them into one,” says Todd Falker, merchandise lead for moving astatine Puma. “We could past return that integer ft onslaught and watch really nan ft of each nan runners interacted pinch nan integer shoe.”

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

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

“Usually you request to build 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 make a decision.”

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

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

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

“The merchandise that you spot here, is nan first beingness prototype that we built aft this integer optimization,” says Girard.

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

It’s sewage investigation to backmost it up, too. Once nan Fast R-3 was finalized, Puma commissioned manufacture master Wouter Hoogkamer—the aforesaid personification who wrote nan original Nike Vaporfly 4% paper—to test nan moving ratio benefits of its caller shoe.

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

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

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

“We’ve ne'er seen immoderate different footwear hit this [the Fast-R 3] connected immoderate personification successful nan 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 nan largest and 2nd largest footwear brand’s champion shoes.”

Sweat Test

Brands don’t often induce adjacent comparison pinch rival brands but numbers for illustration those from Hoogkamer’s study mightiness explicate why Puma threw unfastened nan laboratory doors for america to trial it for ourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

The Results

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

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

In nan world of elite, aliases so superior amateur, running, those are important numbers. While nan ratio gains don’t construe one-for-one into clip savings, nan ratio improvements would mean a theoretical capacity summation for a half marathon of adjacent to a infinitesimal and half (from 1:22:00 to 1:20:37) aliases 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 nan shoes you do it successful but, pinch 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 capacity connected nan feet of existent runners taking portion successful existent runs. But early tests successful nan chaotic are surely affirmative for Puma.

At nan caller 2025 Boston Marathon and London Marathon, Puma put 180 runners successful its Fast-R3, and much than a 3rd of them hit their erstwhile marathon records. That still intends much didn't than did, of course, but it's notable that 38 runners hit 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 put nan Puma supershoes done my own, much thorough, real-world introspection astatine nan London Marathon.

The shoes undoubtedly worked, albeit possibly excessively good successful nan first half. I vanished pinch a clip of 2:58:57—that's 4 minutes slower than my marathon PR, but connected a very basking day. Also, if you cognize thing astir marathon pacing, you’ll cognize it’s a unspeakable thought to tally a half marathon PR successful nan first half of nan 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 really beardown I felt successful nan Puma shoes.

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

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