THE TEST ZONE

NOTES, OPINIONS, USEFUL TIPS, AND THE COOLEST GEAR FROM INSIDE THE WORLD'S MOST RIGOROUS SHOE AND GEAR TESTING LAB

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SKECHERS GORUN SPEED FREEK

PRICE: $200 | TYPE: Road | DROP: 4 mm

WEIGHT: 7.0 oz (M), 5.8 oz (W)

LET IT BE known: 2021 is the year the racing flat has officially been declared dead. Conventional wisdom held that to make a shoe faster, you had to make it lighter. That always meant you’d lace up a shoe with a paper-thin sole on race day—it was, literally, flat compared to the profile of your trainers. But with the wave of new midsole foams, we’ve discovered that cush is king—even on race day. Skechers has been working with one of those new formulations, which it calls Hyperburst, with wonderful success. For its previous top-of-the-line racer, the Speed Elite, it used a moderate amount of foam that, in the end, proved to be too little for going long distances on the pavement. It was too much like a traditional racing flat. Enter the Speed Freek, which is basically the same shoe but with a thicker sole. That extra cushion costs you another $10 and tacks on an ounce of weight. But it makes a huge difference in how far you can run at top speed: Unlike the Speed Elite that we only really employ for 5Kor, maybe, 10K road races, the Speed Freek is easily capable of going a full marathon.