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The Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 is the latest pinnacle racer from the German brand, and it had a dream debut at the London Marathon where it was by Sabastian Sawe and Yomif Kejelcha to run the first official sub-2 hour marathon in history, and by Tigist Assefa to set a women’s only world record for the distance.

Before all that happened, however, Kieran and Nick were able to preview the shoe and do a short run in it. We didn’t break any world records and we’ll need to do a lot more testing when we get samples of the Pro Evo 3 for our full review, but it did leave a lasting impression.

The Adidas Pro Evo 3 might be prohibitively expensive and won’t go on sale fully until the autumn, but it looks well set to be one of the best carbon plate running shoes ever made.

Design & Key Stats

  • Price: £450/$500
  • Weight: 97g/3.4oz (men’s UK 8.5 / US 9)
  • Drop: 3mm
  • Stack height: 39mm heel, 36mm forefoot
  • Upper: Minimal mesh upper
  • Midsole: Lightstrike Pro Evo foam with carbon ENERGYRIM
  • Outsole: Thin Continental rubber

Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 first run

How’s The Fit

Nick and Kieran tested the Pro Evo 3 and both opted to go half a size up on their normal running shoe size, having found Adidas racers tight around the toes in the past. This created a good roomy fit, which would work well if you have longer races in mind.

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The Run Test: First Impressions

The Adidas Pro Evo 3 is a lot softer and bouncier than the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 2, and it’s among the softest carbon plate racers we’ve ever tried from any brand, with a lot of compression underfoot with each stride.

Adidas’ new ENERGYRIM system is used to stabilise this midsole foam and add some propulsion. This runs around the outside of the midsole, rather than being a full plate or the EnergyRods used by past Adidas carbon racers.

This minimal carbon rim is one reason why the shoe is so light, since there’s less carbon in the midsole, and it also means that you sink deeper into the springy midsole foam. You can feel the stack height beneath your feet, and it means the Pro Evo 3 even springier than other carbon shoes.

The incredibly lightweight design, springy foam and rocker geometry create a fast, propulsive ride that’s not as unstable as we first feared when holding the shoe, with the ENERGYRIM supporting the foot on both sides.

The upper did a good job of holding our feet securely on the short runs we did, and the outsole having Continental rubber is a major upgrade on the Pro Evo 2, which we found to be alarmingly slippery in the wet.

We didn’t get a chance to test the Pro Evo 3 on anything slippery, but in the past Continental rubber has served us well on Adidas shoes, so hopefully that’s the case again here.

We’ll save any more definitive thoughts on the Pro Evo 3 for when we’ve been able to fully test the shoe and race in it, but it’s a different shoe to what has come before in the Pro Evo line, and the results we’ve seen from elite athletes already will make it a contender to be one of the best running shoes for racing any distance.

The price tag will also be off-putting with the Pro Evo line, since even other pinnacle racers like the Asics Metaspeed Ray, Puma Fast-R Nitro Elite 3 and Mizuno Hyperwarp Pure cost hundreds less than it.

However, unlike the Pro Evo 2, the Pro Evo 3 seems like something that will truly stand out on the market for its light weight, super-soft ride, and the new ENERGYRIM system, which means more people might well be willing to splash serious cash on it. Especially if elites keep running sub-2 marathons while wearing the shoe.