
With my recent purchase of the new Asics Metaspeed Sky Paris, I thought I’d do a quick take on my experience with the Metaspeed Sky+ as a high-performance training and racing shoe.
I’m not going to go too deep into the technical specifics of the Asics Metaspeed Sky+.
Many others have done a great job explaining the materials, and honestly, I only care about a handful of things such as how it feels and performs.
All super shoes today have great engineering made for elite performances. I trust those smarter than me to know what they’re doing, and I’ll leave my opinion based on my real-life application and experience.
I first discovered the Asics series of super shoes after a brief training stint with several athletes from the Dutch national team. Asics sponsored several of the runners, and they gave great praise to the shoe. At the time I was wearing the Nike Vaporfly for my workouts and races and had no issues with them, but when you’re surrounded by greater runners all wearing the new Asics supershoe, you start to wonder how they would feel yourself!
Given that I do part-time work at Run Flagstaff, a running store in Flagstaff, Arizona, it was super easy to get my hands on a pair, and they arrived within a week of ordering them.
Since then I have done no other races and minimal workouts in any shoe other than the Metaspeed Sky+.
How does it feel?
Coming from Nike, I was surprised that the Metaspeed Sky+ was as firm as it was. The Vaporfly series is known for its plushy yet responsive feel. The Metaspeed Sky+ had no plush and the shoe is very loud when hauling up the road. But, despite the shoe being as firm as it was, the response off the ground was amazing.
With the Metaspeed Sky+, you feel as though you have more connection with the ground, something that you don’t get as much with the Vaporfly, and that you definitely don’t get with the Alphafly moon shoes.
The upper of the shoe is incredibly light (as is the shoe overall) and the toebox has a lot of room for my wide, flat feet. I’ve never had any issues with the fit. I wear a size 10 in this shoe as well as all other supershoes and daily trainers I own.
The only downfall of this shoe was that I was getting some friction burns along the ball of my foot. The insole has a different material to it that, when running long distances, causes a friction burn. I’ve only experienced this with the marathon and very long marathon workouts, but this was never an issue for anything under a half marathon. It could be that I needed better socks, but this was just my observation. I’ve never had this issue in any other shoe.

How does it perform?
Here’s the real test. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how the shoe feels, does it perform as well as the Nike line of shoes?
For a long time, Nike was ahead of the game. There were no other shoes that could match the tech and results Nike was putting out consistently. Asics was the first brand to match the Nike shoes in testing, and this was my exact experience.
I did a workout where I tested the shoe against the Vaporfly and the Alphafly. I performed better in the Metaspeed Sky+ and the Vaporfly than I did in the Alphafly. The Metaspeed Sky+ had a slight edge over the Vaporfly, but to be honest, it was marginal.
As I said in the section before, you have more feel for the ground in the Asics Metaspeed Sky+ but this doesn’t have a negative effect in terms of causing more muscle fatigue. One of the major benefits of a supershoe is that it helps save your legs resulting in less fatigue. Less fatigue = faster running!
So, you have an incredibly responsive and very light shoe, that doesn’t beat your legs up like the real deal racing flats from the 90s and early 2000s.

Here are a few notable races I did the Metaspeed Sky+ and my results
Carlsbad 5000 - 14:50 (PR)
Frostbite Series 10 miler - 52:00 (1st Place)
Houston Half Marathon - 1:06:20 (PR)
Ironman Arizona - 9:43:07 (PR)
Olympic Trials Marathon 2:25:59 - Rough day, but may have had a little COVID left in the system from 2 weeks prior
Final thoughts
The Metaspeed Sky+ should be considered a top racing shoe, especially for distances under the marathon. I’m looking forward to checking out the new Paris series as, from what I’ve read, go back to the more plush-like feel that many loved when the original Metaspeed hit the market. I think this might make it an even greater marathon shoe!
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