Nike Air Zoom Alphafly Next% 3 Prototype (Women's)

Two uses. First, racing, from 10K to the marathon, which is where a plated shoe repays a settled, repeatable stride over a long distance. Second, a handful of race-pace workouts in the weeks beforehand so your ankles and calves adapt to the geometry, since going straight from a soft trainer to a plate on race morning is how people pull up injured. Do not use these as daily trainers. Take your normal size with a little toe room, race in thin socks because the upper is unlined, and avoid wet cambered roads where the tall stack is least stable. Air them out after every run, clean the upper by hand only, and store them flat.

Nike's running story begins with a coach who thought his athletes deserved lighter shoes. Bill Bowerman poured rubber into his wife's waffle iron chasing tread without weight, producing the 1972 Moon Shoe and the 1974 Waffle Trainer, and his athlete Steve Prefontaine became the brand's first track endorser and its lasting symbol. Nike went on to sponsor Sebastian Coe, Carl Lewis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Michael Johnson and Allyson Felix, and named Serena Williams among its endorsers on the other side of sport. The carbon-plate era is the loudest chapter of that history, loud enough that the governing body wrote new rules around it, and a prototype-styled retail shoe is a knowing joke about that.

Everything here serves propulsion. A light, responsive foam provides the stack, a rigid full length plate stiffens the platform and directs the foot forward through the stride, and the upper is pared back to the minimum needed to hold the foot, which is why the shoe weighs so little in the hand. The women's build uses a last shaped for a narrower heel and a different volume through the midfoot, which matters more on a racing shoe than on a trainer because there is no padding to compensate. World Athletics limits sole thickness to 40mm and permits one rigid plate, and compliant models remain legal to race in. In wear, the platform feels alive at speed and slightly precarious when you jog.