ADIDAS ADIZERO ADIOS PRO 5 GETS SAWE'S WORLD RECORD RIM

A carbon fiber rim wraps the outside of a foam midsole instead of sitting inside it as a plate. Adidas built that rim for a shoe most runners will never own, the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, and rationed it to sponsored marathoners at a price north of 500 dollars. Five months later, that rim geometry, called Energyrim, has reached a shoe adidas will sell to anyone training for a fall marathon.

The Adizero Adios Pro 5 launched September 22, 2026, built around Energyrim instead of the carbon rod plate the Pro 4 used. It is the clearest evidence yet that adidas now moves race day technology into its retail line faster than a normal shoe cycle allows.

1:59:30 Is Where This Story Starts

Sabastian Sawe ran 1:59:30 at the London Marathon on April 26, 2026, the first time anyone has legally run a marathon in under two hours. He beat the previous world record, Kelvin Kiptum's 2:00:35, by one minute and five seconds, without the rotating pacer formation that carried Eliud Kipchoge under two hours in a 2019 exhibition that World Athletics never recognized.

Yomif Kejelcha crossed eleven seconds later in 1:59:41, also under two hours, also sponsored by adidas. Both men raced in the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, the 97 gram racing flat that carries Energyrim, a carbon fiber frame wrapped around the outside of Lightstrike Pro Evo foam instead of sitting inside it as a plate. "I feel good, I'm so happy. It is a day to remember for me," Sawe said after crossing the line. Adidas does not sell that shoe the way it sells a normal trainer; it is built for a short list of contracted athletes and a limited retail run priced above 500 dollars when it has appeared at all.

Energyrim Replaces the Carbon Rods Pro 4 Used

The Adizero Adios Pro 5 retails at 275 dollars and swaps the carbon rod system built into the Pro 4 for Energyrim, rim geometry first tested on the Evo 3. Adidas says the change adds nine percent more energy return over the rod design it replaces.

The rim wraps the perimeter of a Lightstrike Pro midsole, the standard foam used across the Adizero racing line, and frees interior volume that a rod system would otherwise occupy. A LightLock 2.0 upper holds the foot against that midsole, and the retail Pro 5 weighs 177 grams, 23 grams, or twelve percent, lighter than the Pro 4 it replaces. That is still eighty grams heavier than the Evo 3 Sawe wore in London, the gap between a shoe rationed to contracted marathoners and one adidas will ship to a running store in Ohio.

Sabastian Sawe Will Never Race in This Pair

Sawe's contract keeps him in the Evo 3 or its successor, not the Pro 5, which adidas built as the trainer racer version of that same rim for everyone else. The Pro 5 uses the standard Lightstrike Pro foam rather than the Evo 3's Lightstrike Pro Evo, a compound that trades some of the race shoe's fragility for a sole that survives more than one marathon.

That distinction matters more than the shared rim does. Evo shoes are built to survive 26.2 miles and little else; the standard Adios Pro line is built to survive a training block. Adidas debuted the Pro 5 in a Solar Turbo, Core Black and Lucid Red colorway, style code KI8294, four days ahead of the Berlin Marathon on September 27, the fastest course on the World Marathon Majors calendar. The launch timing is not accidental. Adidas ran this play once already, syncing the Evo 3's April debut to a race where its origin story would play out on television.

Buy the Version You Can Actually Wear

The Adizero Adios Pro 5 costs a fraction of what the Evo 3 has fetched when available, and it delivers the rim geometry adidas used to break the two hour barrier. For a runner training for a fall marathon, that math favors buying now over waiting for a version that will always cost more and last one race.

Nike's closest answer, the 208 gram Alphafly 4, launched five days earlier at a comparable price and carries its own record pedigree from Kiptum's 2:00:35 in Chicago. Against that shoe, the Pro 5's 177 grams and nine percent energy return claim are the sharper spec sheet on paper, even though neither shoe will get an amateur runner within an hour of Sawe's pace. Skip waiting on the Evo 3. The Pro 5 is the version of this rim a serious runner can actually order before Berlin closes out the major marathon season on September 27.