500km in the adidas EVO SL
A running shoe, a relationship, a journey.
You can’t get the adidas EVO SL. That is to say, you couldn’t.
When it was released by adidas in autumn last year, the EVO SL was available in scant drops that sold out in seconds.
Trying to get a pair involved refreshing the websites of some half dozen online shoe stores several times a day, scrupulously tracking stock in running shoe subreddits, and scouring Google for obscure European resellers.
adidas’ own website were selling the EVO SL via a lottery system. You had to enter, not to win a pair, but to win the chance to buy a pair. This was the running shoe gone viral, the hypebeast playbook applied to a mid-budget shoe for hobby joggers.
And it wasn’t just because of the looks, or the scarcity. It was about the performance.
Sure, there were a few collectors hoarding pairs for their closets and basements. But for the most part, people were desperate to run in them.
And that’s because the adidas Adizero EVO SL, to use its full name (EVO meaning Evolution, SL meaning Super Light, one supposes, or Superleggera if you are being fancy), was being hailed a unicorn shoe, a running shoe holy grail if you will:
Lightweight, lightning quick, incredibly comfortable out-of-the-box, and at £130 ($150), relatively cheap.
According to the everyone who’d tried it, this was a shoe that could do whatever you needed it to. No matter the workout, or the distance, or the pace. A shoe that ticks all the boxes. One shoe to rule them all.
And for once, it was a shoe that lived up to the hype.
The design of the EVO SL is based on the exuberantly monikered adidas Adizero Pro Evo 1, a state-of-the-art concept car of a racing shoe that adidas released in 2023 to record breaking effect (and some very spicy takes) due to a price tag of £450 ($500) and the fact it could be used for precisely one full marathon.
But this was no budget replica, either. The killer feature of the EVO SL that had runners and pundits so excited was the midsole (you know, the squishy foam bit).
For the past few years adidas has had one of the best midsole foams on the market, a formulation of thermoplastic polyester elastomer (TPEE) they call Lightstrike Pro – lauded for its responsiveness and uncommon durability, and usually reserved for its more expensive racing shoes, such as the £220 ($250) Adios Pro 3.
Lightstrike Pro has previously been used in limited quantities, with various pucks and wedges paired alongside lesser foams in their mid-budget training shoes, such as the Adizero SL2 and the Boston 12. But for the EVO SL, adidas were breaking the mold.
For just £130, you could now have a full slab of Lightstike Pro, top to tail. In fact you would get the very same slab that was in the £220 Adios Pro 3, for £90 less (albeit minus the carbon fibre element that gives modern race shoes their customary “pop”).
By the end of 2024, the publicity locomotive was chugging along.
Shoetubers (a special breed of YouTuber who reviews running shoes) were being customarily hyperbolic. Instagram reels were popping off. The subreddits were salivating. And adidas, happy to let the hype train choo-choo, were withholding.
Scarcity, they know, breeds desire. Especially when you’re me.
By January 2025, after three months of sniffing down leads and clicking dubious links I finally had a pair of EVO SLs on my feet.
I bought both the white and black colourways (the only two options available at launch), but returned the white pair because I live in the North of England where the weather is less than clement and white shoes make for a poor investment.
I almost never buy black shoes, but the EVO SL are genuinely quite slick in person – pretty enough to wear casually while muted enough to not to scream “I spend too much time on Strava.”
Stepping in was a dream. Immediate comfort and bounce, something adidas shoes haven’t always been good at, often requiring a break-in period to reach full softness. I walked around my living room, springing off my toes with a simpleton’s grin.
The EVO SL brings with it a sense of step-in joy that reminded me of trying on trainers as a kid, when I wanted to believe that shoes came with superpowers – if I get these, the 8-year-old logic went, I’ll be so fast I can run up walls.
And whether it was a placebo or the result of switching from hard leather school brogues to trainers, I was always faster in that new pair of shoes.
Call it Clark’s Law (named for the UK high street chain): a shoe that feels fast to stand in will be fast to run in.
Safe to say I was very excited to try it.
I ran a treadmill 18k in the EVO SL right off the bat, which is never a good idea, at least not usually. I brought a back up pair of runners incase I hit any problems, thinking I’d switch them out at the 5k mark. But they felt so good I just kept going.
And not just good, but great. It’s hard to find the superlatives without sounding like a middle aged dad trying to grow his YouTube channel. I think the way to describe that first run in the EVO SL is they felt effortless.
That may sound like strange praise. But it's the highest of compliments.
Some shoes, often the ones with a lot of soft foam in the midsole, are hard work to turnover. You have to pay attention to what your foot is doing at all times, you have to fight to get on your toes, you have to wrestle with it the whole way through your gait cycle. These shoes can feel muddy, slow, cumbersome. Like running through treacle.
The EVO SL is the opposite. It rolls you forward with ease, disappearing on the foot as it leaves the deck then catching you with a reassuring squish before the foam immediately springs back, propelling your foot into the air. It felt fast. It felt fun. It felt pure. A shoe you can simply run in by feel. No thinking necessary.
The 18k breezed by, the EVO SL handling uptempo intervals as effortlessly as the easy paces. I’ve felt this sensation before, of course, often in shoes that cost nearly twice the price. For just £130, the EVO SL represents unbelievable value.
They could have sold me the Lightstrike Pro midsole and a roll of duct tape to strap it to my foot with, and I would have called it shoe of the year.
Hell, I'd have driven a truck full of money to Herzogenaurach and dumped it on the front lawn.
If the first test was that out-of-the-box treadmill 18km, the second test was a trip to Los Angeles in February. I had decided to pack precisely one pair of shoes, which I would use for both casual wear and for running. A bit of a gamble, but I needed the space in case I bought any more shoes in the US.
It turns out the EVO SL is an incredible airport shoe. That big chunk of foam underfoot made walking between gates – bags and toddler in tow – a breeze. And for runners, it might be the perfect travel shoe. I never needed another pair.
After months of treadmill-heavy running while I recovered from an achilles issue, the trip to LA was also a chance to test my road legs ahead of London Marathon. With the wide, smooth roads of Westlake Village, where my in-laws live, as my testing ground, I immediately hit my stride on the tarmac. Every step was bliss.
The only problem was I was enjoying it so much I had to force myself to slow down.
The highlight of the trip, running wise at least, was a 24km effort along the coast in Ventura, CA. An idyllic route for my first outdoor long run of 2025, with a winding coastal bike path, scenic ocean vistas, and endless blue skies.
I split it into three sections – 8km easy, 8km hard, 8km easy. With 22-degrees on the thermometer and a cooling coastal breeze, I smashed out my second fastest half-marathon time ever, without meaning to. The run just felt that good. That effortless.
Sure it might have been the weather, or the location, or finally being let loose after injury. But the shoe didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt one bit.
The only negative I can think of are the laces, which are very thin and don’t offer much in the way of grip – a common theme across the Adizero line. I switched them out with cheap 6mm laces Amazon, which solved any minor fit issues instantly.
I went with my usual Adizero size UK12.5 – this is what I wear in the Adios Pro 3, Adios Pro 4, Takumi Sen 9, and Boston 12.
The upper felt a bit tarp like to begin with. However, once I switch the laces and could lock the upper down properly, the EVO SL cradled everything nicely at the heel and forefoot, with only the arch carrying any noticeable excess baggage in my case – my feet are narrow (the notoriously skinny Takumi Sen fits me like a glove).
It didn’t affect the ride at all, and I completely forgot about it after the first run.
Another thing I noticed early on was that because adidas added some additional padding to the heel, the EVO SL came up slightly short versus my usual size – something that didn’t affect the ride either, but would eventually become a problem the week before London Marathon when I forgot to trim my nails before a 16km training run and ended up with a black big toe. Lesson learned.
Oh, and the left shoe squeaked. Every step. For four months. It only happened when walking, not running. I loved the shoe so much that I just didn’t care.
The minor niggles are just a side bar. The headline is that the EVO SL is the hit show of the year. And the star of that show is the full length Lightstrike Pro midsole.
Without a carbon or fibreglass stiffening agent, the race-tuned Lightstrike Pro becomes the softest, most responsive daily training foam on the market.
When I first ran in the Takumi Sen 9, a lower slung shoe built for speed, I described the feeling as poetry. This isn't poetry. The Evo SL is an airport thriller. This is a John Grisham shoe. A Lee Child shoe. Hell, it’s a Tom Clancy shoe: It's pure entertainment.
A feel good, gung-ho, darn-tootin’ page-turner of a shoe, one that's particularly, but not exclusively, enjoyed by Dads.
What helps keep it fun, what the lack of carbon does to a hunk of foam this thick, is make it slightly less stable. What I noticed after that initial treadmill run is that it works the stabiliser muscles a little harder, at least for me and my stride: the abducters, adducters, the tibialis anterior. The faster you go, the more this applies.
I always say a good book teaches you how to read it. Well a good shoe teaches you how to run in it, too. And for the EVO SL that meant paying a little more attention to those muscles both before runs, with strength work, and after runs, with foam rolling.
No shoe is without it’s complications. I will say that if you are in need of stabile or mildly stabile running shoes, you may have a harder time with the EVO SL. It’s not exactly unstable, not even at speed. I’d call it a mild instability shoe.
Just enough to keep you on your toes. Just enough to keep things fun.
As those of us with mental health issues understand, you don’t want to fly off the handle, but it’s not good being stable all the time: mild instability is the sweet spot.
“You know what - we knew when building it - EVO SL was going to rock.”
As of June 2025, new EVO SL colourways are still selling out in minutes. The scarcity tactics, if they existed at all, might have ended, but the popularity has only grown.
Whether you attribute that to marketing, word-of-mouth, fashion trends, price point or sheer performance – or all of the above – adidas knocked this one out of the park.
During an AMA on reddit a few weeks ago, I had the chance to ask Simon Lockett, Global Category Director of Running Footwear at adidas, about the success of the EVO SL, and if it had taken the team by surprise. His reply:
“You know what - we knew when building it - EVO SL was going to rock.”
I retired my original black pair earlier this month, after 500km of running, and many more casual miles – nursery walks, supermarket jaunts, cruises around town.
The bulk of my London Marathon training was done in this shoe. After injuries threatened the early part of the build, the EVO SL kept me rolling merrily along, mile after mile; easy runs, tempo runs, long runs. It handled everything I threw at it.
I could have run the marathon in a pair, but of course, I wanted the flashier, carbon-infused, race-tuned Adios Pro 4 for marathon day. But you could absolutely use this shoe for a marathon. I’m sure many have. One shoe to rule them all.
My EVO SLs were a little beat up by the end, of course, but the thin layer of Continental rubber on the outsole was still in tact, the midsole hadn’t compressed or collapsed at all. There was a small tear in the upper, but nothing catastrophic.
I’m 193cm tall. I weigh nearly 100kg. I put a lot of force through a running shoe. A lighter, slighter runner might get 1000km or more out of a pair.
I have a new pair of EVO SLs. They are white, which, I know, they may not stay for long. But they are very handsome for now (and they don’t squeak).
I’ve only put a few KMs on them so far. I want to save them. My Valencia Marathon training block starts in August, that’s when the real work starts. That’s when I’ll reach for them most days. For easy runs, for intervals. For everything else.
A good running shoe is a relationship. You’ll be spending dozens of hours together, hundreds of thousands of steps. It’s a relationship built on trust. Trust that this shoe won’t get you injured. That it will continue to perform, run after run, week after week.
The perfect shoe doesn’t exist. It’s why people have entire rosters of shoes to switch between. But the EVO SL exists, and it is as close to perfect as I’ve found. For the price, for the comfort, for the versatility. There isn’t a shoe I’ve tried that comes close.
Here’s to the next 500km. I can’t wait.