A running review of the Asics MetaRide - is the running shoe worth the hype?
MetaRide is ASICS’ big hope not just for 2019 but in the medium term. It’s a high-end concept shoe into which they have crammed all their best proprietary tech. It’s priced at a whopping £220 but if it’s well received they plan to use some of the tech in further, less expensive models going forward. We’ve run in it three times, totalling 30 kilometres, so the thoughts below are initial ones only.
What is the MetaRide?
So what is it? It’s an ‘energy saving’ shoe designed specifically to make heel strikers run more efficiently (forefoot strikers don’t look away – there’s something here for you too) and to make long runs easier and less of a slog.
It’s distinctive looking, not just because of the punchy black and red colourway, but because of the highly curved shape of the mid- and outsole which is somewhat banana-like in shape. Remember the MBT shoes of about 10 years ago? It’s a little like that.
ASICS have called it the Guidesole, and it’s designed to rock your foot through quicker from heel to toe with each step, thus cutting out on the wasted energy of your foot very briefly wobbling unstably from side to side around the ankle joint when it hits the ground. ASICS undertook research in conjunction with Loughborough University and their claim is that the results show the Guidesole brings about a 20% reduction in energy loss around the ankle joint, which is significant. There’s obviously no way for us to verify this but the shoes feel immediately different when you put them on, tipping your centre of balance forward and rather nicely aligning your body, putting your shoulders over your hips, which in turn are over your knees - and that’s just walking around. On the run that sensation is more pronounced, to the point that I found myself having to rein myself in a little on a slow recovery run – the feel of the shoe positively encourages you to open up your stride a little and pick your knees up.
Despite this feeling, it isn’t actually ASICS’ intention to make you run faster, merely easier. Where many shoes claim to give you greater speed, the main goal here for the MetaRide is to give you a run that you enjoy more by making less effort. Any other benefits are a welcome by-product.
Elsewhere there are two types of midsole cushioning, which goes toward explaining the hefty, almost old-school 30mm stack height (but zero drop) in the heel. A wodge of lightweight-but-bouncy Flytefoam (ASICS’ equivalent of adidas’s Boost midsole foam) is partnered with a couple of blobs of the traditional gel cushioning in the heel to ensure decent shock attenuation and comfort. Comfort and fit here is aided by ‘Metaclutch‘, a featherlight, flexible but extremely strong heel counter that keeps your heel in position.
In the forefoot, the premium Flytefoam Propel foam has been added to assist with responsiveness and propulsion on toe-off. If you’re a mid-forefoot striker you’ll love the sensation, which can best be described as a smooth, controlled bounce.
This is heightened by the lack of flexibility throughout - it’s a very stiff shoe and quite a firm ride, which again helps minimise lost energy when your feet sink into the ground on impact.
The knitted upper is perhaps the most ‘standard’ part of the shoe. Its best quality is that you don’t really notice it. It’s reassuringly thick yet highly breathable, the fit is snug (and in fact bordering on restrictive each time you first put it on, but this loosens up after a few minutes) with plenty of support in the midfoot but adequate room for toe-splay in the forefoot. Unless you’ve got very wide feet you’ll be fine in this shoe.
The outsole, which features a new type of rubber compound ASICS are simply calling ‘Grip’, looks worryingly plasticky due to the smoothness and shine – but in fact the grip is superb in both the wet and dry as long as you stick to the roads and don’t try and treat the MetaRide as a multiterrain shoe.
As for the weight, it comes in at a very middle-of-the-road 305g for the men’s UK8.5 and 251g for the women’s UK5, another sign that this is not intended as a speedy model.
Is it worth it?
It’s impossible to definitively judge this shoe with such relatively small mileage clocked; I’d need to run in it some more before giving a view on whether it’s the game-changer ASICS would like it to be.
But there’s no doubt it’s a very good shoe; the logic behind the design is sound and could well lead to similar designs becoming standard elsewhere (Hoka has been doing this for several years without really influencing the rest of the market); it’s extremely comfortable, and personally I felt it made me run not only quicker but more easily. But
whether it’s worth the uber-premium price will be determined by a greater sample size of runners than just me. I’m marking this down as ‘not a gimmick’ and ‘definitely worth investigation’.
