It's track season and that means new spikes, this review will compare both of Adidas’s top-line distance spikes for the 2024/25 season.
Adidas has really come to the party this season in the spike department. Nike has typically dominated the distance running spikes market with their air victory and Dragonfly; however, I think we now have a new contender for the top spot.
Adidas like Nike have developed two different spikes for the varying distances on the track. The ambition is their MD (middle distance) spike made for events from 400-1500m and their Avanti designed for events 1500 and above. They differentiate these shoes using foam and plate rigidity and a positive drop. The 400-1500m events demand a more aggressive foot strike and position to push more power into the track and be able to change gears with a swifter action. The ambition does this by incorporating a longer plate and less foam in the heel of the shoe making it 5mm higher in the front of the shoe, giving you a larger platform to push down into. This increases the longitudinal stiffness, making it harder to bend the plate, and providing a more rigid platform to push off from.
When sprinting or moving at faster paces you ideally want as little movement in a shoe as possible, flexing and bending in a shoe slows down ground contact time and releases potential energy in the wrong places, you want all the force you put into the ground to push you forward and a stronger plate underfoot does exactly this. The thing with having so much stiffness in a plate is that it’s going to hold your foot in the position it wants it to, this can be extremely tiring for your foot and lower calf muscles and can be detrimental if you are trying to do this for an extended period of time.
This is where the Avanti comes in. The Avanti is the LD (long-distance) version of the two. They differentiate the two by adding more foam in the heel of the shoe and having a less aggressive plate underfoot. This allows for more flexibility through the longitudinal plain allowing your foot and lower leg to move more naturally therefore putting less demand on the corresponding muscles, less strain = less fatigue, enabling you to perform for longer.
The slightly wider fit is a great addition to the shoe, I really believe this helps in a spike, being so close to the ground you want to be able to disperse your pressure more evenly to generate power, both spikes do this perfectly. When your foot is restricted by a narrow upper you end up pushing pressure into places where it shouldn’t be, but having the wider fit enables the most efficient foot strike.
Both spikes use Adidas’s light strike pro super foam, one of the better foams for the track surface. I say this because tartan tracks are softer than concrete and sometimes the knock on the old light strike pro foam is that it was possibly a little firm for the pavement, however, it works perfectly on the softer track surface as a softer foam on a softer surface can sometime feel energy sapping as you spend a lot longer on the ground waiting for the two to both compress before propelling you forward. The firmer foam and fibreglass-infused plate combine to provide a more responsive feel and less ground contact time for a faster overall spike.
The lockdown fit is a real winner in both models, The knock I had on the previous models was that they didn’t hold your foot in the shoe. Running a speed around bends puts immense pressure on upper materials and if they are not supportive in the right places you can often find yourself either sliding side to side or ending up blowing out the sides of the shoes. The new mesh upper is a lot stronger and provides firmer lockdown materials in all the right places for running around the bends, always Keeping your foot in the shoe and on top of the foam.
Overall, these spikes are a great addition to the track and field market. They provide exception options in both target markets. Knowing the difference between the two is the first step but then knowing how you move when running can determine which model you choose. Either way, Adidas has stepped up in a big way this year on the track and it looks to be an exciting summer ahead for the three-stripe gang.
