It’s properly earlier than daybreak as I swing open the door to my Prius and step into the near-empty parking zone on the base of Chautauqua Park in Boulder, Colorado. Although I’m 5 minutes early for our bi-weekly 5:45am run, I hustle throughout the pavement to catch as much as Leah, my expensive buddy and more-than-punctual working buddy, who’s already shifting towards the First Flatiron trailhead. We begin over the acquainted stretch of hard-packed filth to the place the path narrows into rock-strewn singletrack and make our method up. It’s 1,446 ft of elevation over the 1.4 miles to the highest. As our ft cowl the numerous terrain, our dialog spills into household affairs: first-day-of-school victories and too-true “the youngsters are rising up so quick!” cliché.
We don’t pause for lengthy on the summit; there’s work and “actual life” to return to–however as we descend the switchbacks, I look up on the solar peeking pink over the horizon and really feel grateful for a brand new day, a very good buddy and the posh of working the path earlier than the daunting duties of the day start. And but this blessing is a blip: It looks like no time in any respect has handed earlier than we’re again on the trailhead.
Even with a busy day forward, I (and lots of the runners I do know) love outings like that, the place poof the miles simply … disappear. Too usually I reward the surroundings or the dialog for facilitating these lost-in-the-moment bipedal pursuits. However the footwear that carried me by means of the run, working so seamlessly I neglect I’m in them, deserve a very good little bit of credit score. I’ve had that have extra instances than I can depend–whereas ascending, descending and traversing a variety of terrain–with the adidas Terrex Agravic Movement 2, which is why they’ve grow to be my shoe of selection over the previous months.
One shoe to rule all of them
I’m not the one one who’s been counting on these trailblazers of late. Skilled ultra-distance path runner Abby Corridor—who’s earned second place finishes at elite races just like the 2021 Courmayeur-Champex-Chamonix (a part of the Extremely-Path du Mont-Blanc sequence) and the 2022 Transgrancanaria within the Canary Islands—additionally reaches for the Agravic Movement 2. Corridor, an adidas-sponsored athlete, usually encounters a mixture of rocks, mushy filth and even stretches of gravel or pavement all on a single run and appreciates the seamless method the shoe handles something the path dishes out. “It’s necessary as a path runner to really feel ready for a wide range of eventualities and circumstances,” Corridor says, which is why “it rapidly turned my go-to TERREX shoe.”
Corridor could also be a really completely different sort of runner than I’m–she’s quick, I’m a turtle; she laughs within the face of 20-mile coaching runs whereas I really feel the burn if I am going a lot farther than my neighborhood 10-kilometer route. However the versatile Agravic Movement 2 covers our diverging wants.
That’s precisely what it was designed to do. “We needed to deliver a trusted feeling on technical terrain to a wider viewers,” says Niklas Benzer, senior product supervisor for TERREX, adidas’ outdoor-focused sub-brand. “For lots of athletes, the Agravic Movement 2 could be extra of a coaching shoe as a result of there are extra specialised, lighter footwear for races. However ultimately, the Agravic Movement 2 is a superb shoe for the on a regular basis runner to do most of their miles.”
That stated, footwear within the Agravic line have crossed many a end line. Corridor herself turned to the unique Agravic Movement in 2020 when she set out for an unsupported (Learn: No assist from anybody alongside the route) Quickest Recognized Time (FKT) try by means of the Sierra Nevada mountains on the Nüümü Poyo, often known as the John Muir Path. Conscious that she could be traversing 220 miles throughout every little thing from buttery clean filth to boulder fields–and preferring to order premium house in her pack for cashew milk yogurt and Tailwind sports activities gasoline, not additional footwear–she selected a “quiver killer” that may maintain up it doesn’t matter what the path threw her method.
“We needed to deliver a trusted feeling on technical terrain to a wider viewers.”
– Niklas Benzer, senior product supervisor, adidas TERREX
Corridor says that utilizing the Agravic Movement 2 for a multi-day FKT try speaks to “how versatile they’re” on a wide range of trails. “Being an ultrarunner, you don’t need to placed on a shoe that feels just like the equal of excessive heels the place it’s fussy, otherwise you’ve bought to get the lacing excellent. I need to placed on a shoe that feels acquainted, that feels simple.” For Corridor, the Agravic is “prepared for something.”
For fellow ultrarunner Taylor Nowlin, “something” meant the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run. In what to some was an sudden transfer, the adorned ultrarunner modified out of her commonplace race shoe, the adidas TERREX Pace Extremely, on the second assist station. Her ft had began to swell, and she knew she wanted to go a half dimension up. Enter the Agravic Movement. The footwear carried Nowlin to a seventh-place end within the ladies’s division, 22 total. “I prepare in each, so I knew both would work,” she says. “I truly took the Flows off one among my crew member’s ft, which was undoubtedly not deliberate!”
Corridor provides {that a} shoe’s familiarity is necessary come race day. “Having a deep relationship with gear that you just’ve gotten to know in coaching is one thing that may be actually beneficial on race day,” she says. “It’s one thing that’s tried and true. The identical issues that may make it a very good coaching shoe, is in some methods, what makes it a very good racing shoe.”
The origin story of an out of doors powerhouse
Witnessing the signature three-stripe brand crossing the end line close to the entrance of the pack at elite races could be shocking for an American viewers that perceives adidas as a soccer model with a knack for monochromatic tracksuits and sneakerhead-worthy Stan Smiths. That’s a fairly slim lens for what knowledge analytics web site Statistica studies to be the biggest sportswear producer in Europe, second solely to Nike worldwide. Forbes lists its 2021 income at $22.6 billion.
Within the late Seventies, adidas created a light-weight strategy shoe for legendary mountaineer Reinhold Messner, the primary individual to summit Mount Everest with out supplemental oxygen.
Whereas that quantity consists of adidas’ myriad forays into every little thing from soccer to hockey (they’re an official clothes shop for each ladies’s FIFA World Cup soccer and the NHL)—to not point out high-fashion ventures just like the Yeezy collab with Kanye West—the multi-billion-dollar determine additionally encompasses adidas TERREX, whose roots go again almost 50 years.
Within the late Seventies, adidas created a light-weight strategy shoe for legendary mountaineer Reinhold Messner, the primary individual to summit Mount Everest with out supplemental oxygen. The improvements developed for these footwear had been foundational to what, in 2007, expanded right into a full lineup of outdoor-focused footwear and attire marketed below the identify adidas Outside. 4 years later, the Outside sub-brand launched TERREX to the U.S. market.
When path working gained a foothold within the outside house within the early 2010s, adidas was primed to be a key participant. “Earlier than [trail running], it was nearly shifting quick within the mountains,” adidas’ Benzer says. “And that’s the place we got here from.”
Introducing the Agravic
On condition that historical past in fast-trekking footwear, introducing the “lighter and runnable” Agravic line in 2015 was a pure development, Benzer says.
The most recent member of that assortment, the Agravic Movement 2, updates the time-tested applied sciences constructed into the unique Agravic Movement mannequin. It retains the grippy Continental rubber outsole–full with a lug sample versatile sufficient to facilitate confidence on uneven, rocky sections with out feeling overly clunky on stretches of pavement. Now, nonetheless, the shoe has a Lightstrike EVA foam midsole for a good, “flowy” feeling throughout various terrain and a Professional-Moderator full-length rock safety plate. The re-engineered mesh higher enhances airflow and is made with recycled plastic supplies, a partnership with environmental group Parley for the Oceans. And it doesn’t harm that the Agravic Movement 2 comes with an approachable price ticket ($140 for the males’s, $160 for the ladies’s).
All of those options mix to type a shoe prepared for any sort of path. “It sounds bizarre to say purpose-built for versatility,” Corridor says, “however that’s sort of what it’s. [The Flow 2] is purpose-built for use for a wide range of functions.”
A skeptic may see the Agravic Movement 2’s versatility as a weak point. And positive, somebody who path runs solely on technical, scree-covered trails or all the time in muddy circumstances may discover a beefier, lugged-out shoe to higher match their particular wants. Likewise, the professionals may select a lighter-weight pair of kicks just like the adidas Terrex Pace Extremely (simply 210 grams!) for days once they’re toeing the beginning line. (Although, as Corridor and Nowlin present, there are notable exceptions.)
“The Agravic Movement 2 shouldn’t be this loopy tremendous shoe that makes you 4% quicker,” Benzer says. As a substitute, it lets the consumer stress much less over their shoe selection. “You simply exit and know you may deal with every little thing that is available in these footwear.”
Driving quarter-hour dwelling after my early-morning run, I begin making a psychological to-do listing for the day: pack the college lunch, interview an influential athlete, tame days of analysis and reflection into a private essay. I really feel a bit overwhelmed. And it makes me that rather more grateful for the time on the path, when simply as Corridor and Benzer promised, I felt like I used to be prepared for something.
