The greatest thing about the shoe is the recovery following a hard effort.

With that being said, in my current training block I haven’t done any speedwork, so I feel with more focused workouts this shoe can hold its own. When getting down to 4:50 pace, I felt that I was getting close to the max speed in these. The shoe felt so good, responsive, and supportive. The 3-mile, 2-mile, 1-mile interval, again, went very well. Late in tempo runs, when it starts to get tough and form starts to break down, the Alphafly keeps you moving forward. I was able to lock in around 5:15 pace and hold consistently. The two key workouts I used this shoe for: a tempo run and a 3-mile, 2-mile, 1-mile interval workout with 2 minutes rest. The paces I ran in this shoe went from marathon/tempo pace (5:10-5:20 per mile) down to about 10K pace (4:50 per mile). Each iteration of the shoe has outdone the previous.

I’ve been a big fan of the Nike carbon-fiber plated shoes since the original Vaporfly 4%. “This is one of the best running shoes I have ever tested! I loved this shoe. Marathon PR: 2:22:33 | Weekly Mileage: 75 | Footstrike: Midfoot Thankfully there are massive pull tabs, though I still feel like I’m about to dislocate my shoulder when yanking each shoe on.

Those changes all make the shoe feel better on foot, but getting into the shoe remains a real struggle. It also gave the tongue a little padding for comfort and, for the first time, added cushioned pods into the Flyknit at the heel. Nike bolstered the sides of the forefoot but left the top of the toebox open. The upper now uses “AtomKnit 2.0.” This newer fabric is more engineered compared to the one-piece upper on the original. The back of the shoe has been redesigned to improve stability.

Nike zoom air fire.