ASICS Wants Its Bouncy Road Shoes to Meet the Trail

ASICS will start selling a new trail running shoe called BLAZEBLAST on August 1, priced at £140. It’s a modest launch, but it comes as the brand tries to catch up in one of running’s fastest-growing categories.

Trail running has surged in recent years. The Sports & Fitness Industry Association counted 16.1 million trail runners in the US in 2024, up nearly 9 percent from the year before. UTMB, the sport’s premier ultra-distance race, said trail run uploads on Strava roughly doubled between 2022 and 2025.

That growth has mostly favored brands built around trail from the start, like Salomon and Hoka. ASICS, better known for road and track shoes, has been playing catch-up as its existing trail lineup (the Gel-Trabuco, Trabuco Max, Fuji Lite) sticks to a traditional, technical formula rather than driving the brand’s momentum.

That started to change this year. At UTMB in Chamonix, ASICS athlete Tom Evans won the men’s 108-mile race outright, with teammate Ben Dhiman finishing second — the first British men’s win since 2010. Both wore an unreleased ASICS prototype built with the brand’s trail team, a sign ASICS can compete at the sport’s highest level.

BLAZEBLAST is a different bet, aimed at a different runner. It’s built around FF Blast Max, the same cushioning foam already in ASICS’ popular Novablast 5 and Sonicblast road trainers, giving road runners who dabble in trails a familiar, bouncy ride instead of a stiffer, more rugged one. A “Trampoline Pod” in the forefoot adds extra spring at toe-off, and the outsole’s 2.5mm lugs are shallower than on ASICS’ more technical trail shoes, enough grip for packed trails, not built for steep or muddy terrain.

ASICS has said as much itself: BLAZEBLAST is meant as an entry point, not a racing shoe. The bet is that most of trail running’s new growth is coming from curious road runners, not hardcore ultrarunners — and that they’ll be drawn to something that feels like the shoes they already wear.