Science Just Crowned This the World’s Fastest Running Shoe. You Probably Won’t Guess the Brand

Any conversation about super shoes starts with Nike. It usually ends there, too. After all, the brand has dominated the top end of the running-shoe industry since it debuted the first Vaporfly in 2017 — a shoe that scientists found improved running economy up to four percent.

The Vaporfly was so disruptive upon launch that World Athletics, running’s global governing body, changed its equipment rules, setting limits on advanced footwear technology (AFT) like foams and plates.

Photo by Jack Seemer for Gear Patrol

No matter: the shoe and its Swoosh-laden successor have since fueled the fastest recorded marathon times in history. They also ushered in an arms race to design the most efficient shoe on the planet — one that Puma, of all brands, now claims to have won.

Don’t believe them? They thought you might say that. So they even brought receipts.

Running ahead

Ahead of the Boston Marathon, Puma has boldly claimed that the next evolution of its top super shoe, the Fast-R Nitro Elite 3, is the fastest model in the world. No ifs, ands or buts.

Puma

To back it up, the brand teamed up with the University of Massachusetts Amherst for a study comparing a prototype of the Fast-R Nitro Elite 3 against the Nike Alphafly 3, Adidas Adios Pro Evo 1 and the previous generation of the Fast-R Nitro Elite.

Notably, the study was funded by Puma and one of the authors, Laura Healey, is an employee for the brand. However, the lead researcher was none other than Dr. Wouter Hoogkamer, whose publication in the journal Sports Medicine back in 2016 originally yielded Nike’s four-percent figure. He and the university assert that Puma had no influence on their findings.

According to Hoogkamer, most super shoes run at a very high level of efficiency, with differences of around a single percentage point between models and brands.

The tested version of the Fast-R Nitro Elite 3, he found, offers a 3.15 to 3.62 increase in efficiency, compared to the Alphafly 3 and Adios Pro Evo 1, which have both claimed world records and Olympic medals.

Jack Seemer for Gear Patrol

For context, an economical improvement of 3.15 percent is nearly five minutes for a three-hour marathoner — the difference of qualifying for Boston or not for the most competitive age groups.

“We haven’t seen huge improvements recently, which made everybody in the field think that we sort of have reached this plateau,” Hoogkamer said in a press release issued by the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

As such, the Fast-R Nitro Elite 3 represents the biggest jump in efficiency since the Vaporfly was tested almost 10 years ago.

Puma

Built by science, backed by science

Unlike most shoes, which brands develop with iterative updates on a prototype, Puma claims to have to designed the Fast-R Nitro Elite 3 using a data-driven computational process to decides elements like carbon-plate stiffness, optimal foam placement and overall geometry to minimize weight.

Puma

The last point is probably the shoe’s biggest departure from the previous generation, since it weighs nearly 3.5 ounces less (a whopping ton in shoe-speak, especially when it comes to racers).

What’s more, it carries Puma’s new foam compound called NitroFoam Elite, deployed in a decoupled fashion similar to previous iterations of the Nike Alphafly (including the version Eluid Kipchoge used to run an unsanctioned marathon trial in less than two hours).

However, the Fast-R Nitro Elite 3 is not a wild departure in AFT and Hoogkamer isn’t sure its gains can be pinned to a single attribute but more the way the brand “mixed the ingredients.”

Regardless, one thing he and his team are confident of is that the shoe isn’t just faster. It also fits more feet.

When testing super shoes at a scientific level, it’s not uncommon to see some participants respond negatively to specific models, ultimately running at less efficiency than they would otherwise.

As for the Puma Fast-R Nitro Elite 3, none of the 15 runners who participated in the study were worse off, and even the worst reponder still saw gains around one percent.

“With this shoe, we see that, universally, everybody responds positively to this new footwear condition,” said UMass doctoral candidate Monty Bertschy.

Pricing and availability

Limited pairs of the Puma Fast-R Nitro Elite 3 are for sale at the brand’s Boston Marathon popup. A wider release is scheduled for April 25.

The Fast-R Nitro Elite 3 costs $300 and has a projected lifespan of about 200 miles, according to Puma.

Puma

Puma Fast-R Nitro Elite 3

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