The adidas Adizero Adios 2:
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| I thought this box was empty when I first picked it up...nope, there were shoes inside. |
There is a lot of text in this one without many pictures, so let me cut to the chase and give these shoes a score of 37 points. What does this mean? Well, if they were in the Division round of the NFL playoffs they would have beaten the Broncos, the Packers, the Falcons, the Seahawks and the Texans but lost to the Patriots, the 49ers and the Ravens. What does the score mean in terms of comparison to other shoes? For that, you will have to read on...
First: why am I running in the
Adios?
The other week I went to City Sports in Porter Square for the Saturday
morning Run Club (1/13/13). Melanie from adidas was there to let us try out the
adidas Adizero Boston trainers on the run. I was skeptical when I first picked
up the Boston and felt how massive the heel was, but I laced them up and took
them out for 5 miles in ~36:40. The Boston was better than many of the adidas
trainers that I had tried in the past but I still needed to be honest when it
came time to review the shoe.
My review reflected the stiff ride, the heavy heel and the steep drop
across the shoe. I reported that although I tend to associate adidas with
distance running because of their historical associations with the Boston and
Rotterdam Marathons, I was yet to find an adidas shoe that worked for me.
Melanie emailed me after reading my review to recommend trying the Aegis or the
Adios. I did my homework and decided to give the Adios a try. Thanks Melanie!
Second: why am I bulleting this
into sections like “First” and “Second”?
Because I want to.
Third: My out of the box
impression.
The Adios showed up on Thursday 1/17/13 in a box down next to my
mailbox. Thursday was a rough day at work; we had a fairly major layoff along
with announcing some significant cost saving measures. I didn't lose my job,
but the mood was understandably subdued in the afternoon so it was a nice spark
to my day to see the box waiting for me.
I picked it up and wondered if it really was the Adios or if someone
had just left an empty cardboard box by my mailbox. I took it upstairs and cut
it open to find that there was indeed a pair of Adios inside.
I could bore you with all the technical specs about this shoe. I could
tell you about the fit and the last and the upper, the sole and the toe box. I
won’t. None of that information belongs in the review of a shoe. You can look
up all that information from the adidas website but none of it can give you any
idea of what to expect when you put it on.
My first impression of the Adios after taking the shoes out of the box
was: these are wicked light and they look like trainers with none of the silly
gimmicks I've come to expect these days.
Fourth: My initial review.
I have now had these shoes for 8 days and taken them out for 6 runs
totaling 55.9 miles, so I think that I’m ready to give an initial review. I
will write another final review when they wear out.
Here are the workouts that I've used these shoes for:
11.6 mile Hill Workout (2
mile warm up, 7.6 miles of hills, 2 mile cool down)
10.3 mile Tempo/MP Workout
(2 mile warm up, 2.1 miles Tempo, 4.2 miles MP, 2 mile cool down)
8.2 mile Aerobic Run
(Supposed to be 16 mile Long, but lingering Achilles issues cut the run in
half)
Track Workout (~2 mile warm
up, 400m Strides, 400m, 400m, 400m, 400m, Mile, Mile, Mile, ~2.5 mile cool
down)
8.6 mile MP Workout
(treadmill: 15 min warm up, 5 miles at MP, cool down until the timer on the gym
treadmill stopped it at 1 hour)
8.2 mile Easy Run (just easy
miles on a treadmill at the Porter Square Planet Fitness to protect the walnuts
from freezing off)
I have never before used the same shoe to run a 75 second 400 and a 10+
mile hill workout but I wanted to find the limits for the Adios. I didn't find them.
On that first hill workout I needed to stop every twenty minutes to
make adjustments to the lacing of the shoe. This is probably normal as it
breaks in and the cushioning molds itself to my foot; I've just never had a
shoe go from new to broken in so quickly. By the end of the 11.6 miles the
Adios felt as comfortable as if I had been running in them for 50 miles.
More surprising was how easy they made going faster feel. On this
workout, my first watch check is the 2 mile mark at the intersection of Park
and Mass Ave. I usually get to Park at 15:45. This is my warm up; it is
supposed to be at aerobic pace. I thought I was going aerobic pace, but in the
Adios, I got to Park in 13:26 and had to make the conscious effort to check my
watch every 1.5 miles and make the effort to keep it slow through the rest of
the workout.
On Saturday I took them out on a trail in North Carolina for 10.3 miles
of up tempo running. There’s not much to say about them from this one. I expect
lightweight trainers to be good for this kind of run and they were. I got a bit
ahead of myself and went too fast on a downhill during my cool down from this
run and reaggravated my right Achilles, but I do not believe that this was
related to the shoe.
On Sunday I cut my long run short because I didn't want to hurt the
Achilles, but if I wasn't looking forward to putting the Adios on I might have
skipped this run entirely.
I have only ever run in spikes or flats on the track before so I
expected the Adios to slow me down and let me hit my prescribed paces. They
felt good in warm up and I did my 400m strides in 1:15 so by the time the
workout started I had found some new confidence in these shoes. The workout
started with 4x 400m intervals at an 84 second target; I ran 81, 82, 81 and 83.
Then came the mile repeats. My first mile was 5:33 and felt smooth and easy (my
target was 5:40 for all 3x miles). The second mile was 5:38 which looks like I
was closer to target pace, but because of how busy the track was I ran this
mile in lane 3 which probably meant that my pace wasn't much better than the
first mile.
Finally, I asked Mike to pace me through the first 400m of the last
mile. With Mike’s help, I was able to run an extremely relaxed 5:39.
On Wednesday, the Adios got their first taste of the treadmill. Not
much to say about this run from a shoe stand point but they didn't cause any
problems. Not much to say about the easy treadmill run either.
Historically, my problem with adidas trainers has been that they seem
to try to be too much of a compromise and never end up being a useful shoe for
me. The Adios is different. It does not seem to be a compromise of a track shoe
and a racer and a training shoe and a trail shoe, it just seems to be a shoe
that is perfectly suited for all of these. I frankly did not believe that a
major athletic wear manufacturer like adidas could make a shoe this good. I
thought that shoes like this came only from niche manufacturers. I was wrong.
The Adios has replaced the Kinvara 1 as the best shoe I have run in.
Ultimately, the difference in weight between a 4oz racing flat and a
15oz stability trainer will not have much effect on your race time. A shoe
cannot magically make you run faster. What the Adios does (and any good shoe
should do) is make you excited to put it on and go out and train. Consistency
in your training will do more for your race time than any change in racing shoe
weight ever can.
I expect to wear out his pair of Adios long before the Providence
Marathon, but I think that I have found my training/racing shoe until adidas
discontinues the Adios (or until they do an update that I don’t like).
In a month or so, I’ll post an update with how many miles I got out of
this pair before it wore out.
May your training miles be ever
hilly and may all your races have free beer!
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