The adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 in Cloud White / Core Black / Solar Turbo (style code KH7678) releases today, April 27, at $500 through the adidas Confirmed app and a small list of specialty retailers including Solebox, BSTN, and End. The story isn't the price. The story is the weight: this is the first adidas running shoe to crack the 100-gram mark, weighing in at roughly 97 grams in a men's size 8.5. For context, that's lighter than most racing flats from a decade ago, and lighter than the Vaporfly that started the super-shoe arms race.
The Pro Evo line has always been a stripped-down, single-use marathon weapon — the original drew comparisons to a piece of carbon-fiber origami, and adidas has openly described it as a shoe with a finite race-day lifespan. Evo 3 doubles down on that philosophy. There's no pretense of versatility here. You're paying half a grand for a shoe engineered to deliver a few personal bests at a major and then quietly retire. Tigst Assefa's marathon world record was set in the predecessor; the new model is built for whoever is chasing her next.
The wider context is the elite-marathon tax. Nike's Alphafly 3, On's Cloudboom Strike, Puma's Fast-R Nitro Elite, and now adidas have all pushed retail past $300, and adidas is the first to plant a flag at $500. That price tells you who this shoe is actually for: not casual runners, not even most sub-three marathoners, but the slice of the field for whom shaving 30 seconds off a PR is worth more than the cost of the shoe itself. Everyone else is paying for proximity to the technology. The drop is small, the raffles will be brutal, and resale will follow the same pattern as every limited Pro Evo before it — sub-9.5 sizes will hold value, the rest will sit.
If you can get a pair at retail through the Confirmed app, that's the only sane way to buy it. End, Solebox, and BSTN raffles close in the next 24 hours.
Related on Uristocrat: the Pro Evo 3 restock at Dick's Sporting Goods.
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