Adidas Adios Pro 4 Trail - An Unusual 300 Mile Review
Background
I have unusual preferences, and this is not a recommendation for others. I've been running trails in road marathon flats since the early 2000s when trail shoes were overbuilt and clunky. A stockpile of non-Boost Adios 2 was my go-to for almost a decade.
I've tried to make carbon plated super shoes work on trails with mixed results. Vaporfly 4%, 1, 2, 3, Endorphin Pro 1, 3, Deviate Elite 1, 2, 3, and Skechers Speed and Razor Elites. Stability, traction, and durability are always an issue. And I have to precision-crack or shatter the plates to attempt to bring back some stability.
Adios Pro 4
I've been using a pair for road racing since January. 84 miles with a 2:32 marathon and several half marathons. It performed plenty well, but I won't focus on reviewing its road performance.
I'm running the Hardrock 100 this year and hadn't found a shoe I wanted to race in. I prefer something 7-8oz that is nimble and durable/grippy enough for my running style, but maximum performance. After years in road super shoes, it's hard to "unsee" their high energy return and leg savings over this kind of distance, and I've only found inferior trail shoes in that respect.
I had previously ruled out the Adios Pro 4 because of its shallow lugs, which would be a problem on the terrain. But after seeing too many shoe resoling clips on Instagram, I decided if the shoe otherwise worked I could just swap out the outsole. I now have 230 additional trail miles for a total of 315. All of them in Telluride on Hardrock and similar trails with the original outsole. I have a brand new pair with Vibram Litebase Speedstar ready for the race, courtesy of San Juan Resole in Durango and am stoked to see what they can do.
How has the shoe been?
Upper
Lightlock has been awesome. Extremely secure and I haven't felt myself wishing for more lockdown. No pressure points and great on sharp turns. Tight enough weave to repel grit yet drains well. Several puncture wounds from sticks early on didn't cascade into big rips.
Midsole
More on this in the stability section, but it's also been awesome. Having one of the highest energy return super foams with a full stack height not only feels incredible, but it makes legs feel light even when I'm tired and beat up. This is what I'm hoping makes it all worth it late in a 100. At 300+ miles I would swear they feel new. Putting them on next to a new pair they have just as much comfort and energy return, though the forefoot seems to be softer which may be a result of the rods cutting through the lower foam.
A surprising and delightful aspect was the ride on uphills and downhills. Most of the other road super shoes I've tried have been bad on them. On uphills the shoe is too stiff and works against you. On the downs it doesn't really work with you. But the Pro 4 has such an early stage rocker that it lowers uphill activation energy noticeably. The foam squishes in so much that it further lowers the effective drop, but then rebounds on push off and you feel the spring. On the downs, the heel compresses noticeably which helps reduce pounding on really steep downhills. The roll forward through the rest of the midsole similarly squishes but rebounds, in a way I really enjoyed.
Outsole
Mind blowing. See the pics, I think every single rectangle still has a sharp edge. I don't understand how the CPU has held up like this on Hardrock terrain. As expected they slip more on really steep and loose surfaces, but on 80-90% of what I ran I didn't notice a difference. They gripped extremely well to almost everything and even did well with stream crossings and wet (but not muddy) trails.
Stability
One of the biggest surprises was how stable it is out of the box. The rods are far superior to plates and mold around rocks. The extreme softness further molds around them. The forefoot flares out wider than most of my trail shoes, but is still very nimble. The heel is less stable than I would like, but workable.
Durability
Touched on some pieces above, but there were a few emerging issues. Similar to older models, the rods started divoting into the foam on the bottom. A few miles ago they cut through small bits of the CPU outsole after some especially aggressive sharp rock running (Telluride to Chapman and back).
Unsurprisingly, rods started breaking pretty quickly. They click here and there but it hasn't negatively affected the ride. If anything it just made them more flexible in a good way. The shoe isn't quite as hard to bend but still has enough rods in tact to give some propulsion.
A major problem early on was the decoupled heel starting to tear where each half is attached. I addressed this first with shoe goo, then with a big wedge of foam that made the heel a continuous surface and spread pressure more evenly. I've had to touch up the shoe goo but otherwise this has worked well. The re-soled pair also uses a foam filler and completely solves this. I used shoe goo along the way to handle several other small rips, but it may have been ok without that.
Final Thoughts
I know this wouldn't work for most runners, but I really wonder if some aspects of this would make the best trail racer ever seen. Both lighter and more performant.
I have one run in the new pair with the Vibram outsole and I'm hoping it will work great at Hardrock. It's 8.5 oz which is heavier than I would like, but still lighter with better foam than anything else on the market.
The Adios Pro 5 looks even closer to my ideal trail shoe. With a few tweaks to the outsole grip and overall durability, I think it could be a sub 7 oz trail racer that outperforms most 9 oz trail shoes. Can't imagine this will be created, but I can still dream!