Adidas Has Taken the Carbon Rods Out of the New Adizero Adios Pro 5

The Adizero Adios Pro 5 went on sale on Tuesday at $275, and the five carbon rods that have sat under the forefoot of every previous Adios Pro are not in it. Adidas has set a carbon ring, which it calls ENERGYRIM, into the outer wall of the midsole, and given the space the rods used to occupy over to foam.

The Adios Pro Evo 3 that Sabastian Sawe wore to 1:59:30 in London stands 39mm at the heel and 36mm at the forefoot and weighs 97 grams. The Pro 5 comes in at 39mm and 35mm, within a millimeter of the same shape, with 80 grams of upper, outsole and durability built back into it and $225 off the price. The Evo 3 came out in April in a release so limited that resale prices ran past $5,000, and it still costs $500.

Set against the Pro 4 it replaces, the Pro 5 is 23 grams lighter, at an average 177 grams in a UK 8.5 sample, a saving Adidas puts at 12 percent. Its forefoot sits 2mm higher than the Pro 4’s while the heel has not moved at all, so the drop comes down from 6mm to 4mm. That 39mm heel leaves a millimeter to spare under the 40mm ceiling World Athletics has applied to road shoes since April 2020.

The Rods Lasted Six Years and Four Generations

Adidas built the rods for the first Adios Pro in June 2020: five carbon-infused lengths, each tuned separately, set along the forefoot to follow the line of the metatarsals, and each free to load on its own depending on where a runner pressed. The rim works the other way round, holding the stiffness out at the edge of the shoe and leaving nothing through the middle, which is where the extra LIGHTSTRIKE PRO foam has gone. Adidas puts the gain in energy return at 9 percent over the Pro 4. The upper is a new LIGHTLOCK 2.0 build, and Continental rubber covers a reworked LIGHTTRAXION outsole.

How the Price Compares With Nike’s Alphafly 4

At $275 the Pro 5 costs $25 more than the Pro 4 did, which is the opposite of what Nike did five days earlier. The Alphafly 4 went on sale Sept. 17 at $280, $25 under the $305 the Alphafly 3 has carried, and the limited first run was gone before the wider release set for Oct. 29. The Pro 5 is on sale worldwide through adidas.com, the brand’s own app and a list of retailers.

More than 25 athletes in Kenya, Ethiopia and the United States ran in the Pro 5 through its development, Sawe among them, five months after he ran 1:59:30 in London on April 26 to become the first man under two hours in a record-eligible marathon, with Yomif Kejelcha 11 seconds behind him in 1:59:41, both in the Evo 3. Adidas says no shoe in the Adizero line has been through more testing. Stephan Scholten, the company’s vice president of product, said every record its athletes have set “has taught us more,” and that the Pro 5 “transforms those learnings into our most advanced race-day shoe yet.”

Berlin runs on Sunday, and Tigst Assefa is in the field. She took the women-only world record to 2:15:41 in London on the same April morning, in the same shoe.