Metaspeed Ray: Asics's lightest running super shoe to date

Asics has announced its lightest super shoe to date, the Metaspeed Ray, made for absolutely gunning it during a race.

The Asics Metaspeed Ray weigh just 129g in a pair of UK size 8.5s, radically lighter than the 218g Nike Alphafly 3, one of the most popular super shoes for marathon runners.

You wouldn’t guess it to look at the pair either, with a foam stack height pushing towards the maximum allowed for major events at 39.5mm.

The low weight is partly down to the use of a new kind of foam, dubbed FF Leap by Asics’s marketing bods. It’s the “lightest, softest and bounciest” the shoe maker has produced yet, apparently.

The Metaspeed Ray combine this new formulation with the FF Turbo Plus foam used in Aspics’s other Metaspeed series super shoes. And the pair has a minimal carbon plate, and just enough rubber grip on the bottom to avoid you slipping around the place even in the summer months.

It sounds like a great way to score a PB, but you’ll have to prepare your wallet for this one. A pair of Aspics Metaspeed Ray shoes costs £265, and will be available from August 12. They’re recommended for forefoot strikers in particular.

Asics has also updated a couple of other existing lines in the Metaspeed family, the Metaspeed Sky Tokyo and Metaspeed Edge Tokyo.

Fans of these shoes will note the range has skipped from being branded "Paris" to "Tokyo", another of the world’s key running cities and host of the 2025 World Athletics Championships this September.

The Edge Tokyo and Sky Tokyo both cost £240, are both out in July. So what’s the difference?

The Sky series has a wider toe box and a slightly less aggressive feel, compared to the Edge. Asics calls the Edge its “pinnacle” racing shoe, “designed for cadence-style runners who are looking to start fast and finish faster.”

All three of these pairs use Asics’s new FF Leap foam, but to differing degrees, as you can tell from a glance at their foam stacks.

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