adidas Goes All-In on Trail Racing With the New Terrex Agravic Speed Ultra Evo
The road super shoe revolution has officially reached the mountains.
At UTMB week in Chamonix, adidas has unveiled the Terrex Agravic Speed Ultra Evo – the brand's lightest, fastest and most ambitious trail running shoe to date.
At €500, it also becomes one of the most expensive trail running shoes ever released.
It's a bold move. But after looking through the available details, it feels like adidas isn't trying to build the next great trail shoe.
They're trying to redefine what a trail super shoe can be.
A trail version of the Adios Pro Evo
If the name sounds familiar, that's no coincidence.
The Agravic Speed Ultra Evo borrows heavily from the technology behind adidas' record-breaking Adizero Adios Pro Evo road racer.
Rather than simply making the existing Agravic Speed Ultra lighter, adidas has introduced an entirely new construction centred around a Dual ENERGYRIM platform and a redesigned dual-layer LIGHTSTRIKE PRO midsole. The goal is to combine the explosive feel of a road racing shoe with the adaptability needed for technical mountain terrain.
On paper, it's one of the most technically ambitious trail shoes we've seen.
The numbers
Weight ~250 g
Stack height 39 mm / 33 mm
Drop 6 mm
Midsole Dual-layer LIGHTSTRIKE PRO
Outsole Continental Rubber
Upper TRAILOCK woven upper
Price €500 / $500
The shoe will debut during UTMB Mont-Blanc with an extremely limited release in Chamonix before becoming more widely available later this year.
adidas is making some big claims
According to adidas' own testing, the new platform delivers:
approximately 10% greater energy return
around 1% improved running economy
roughly 5% lower weight than the Agravic Speed Ultra 2
Those numbers naturally need to be validated by independent testing, but they show exactly what adidas is chasing: maximum efficiency over ultra distances rather than simply shaving grams.
Not built for everyone
One thing stands out immediately.
This doesn't look like a shoe designed for the average trail runner.
The narrow platform, lightweight upper and aggressive geometry all suggest one target audience: elite runners racing long ultras at high speed.
Think UTMB.
Think Western States.
Just like the Adios Pro Evo on the roads, this feels less like a mainstream product and more like a technology demonstrator—a shoe built to answer one question:
How fast can we make a trail racing shoe?
The biggest talking point? The price.
There's no getting around it.
At €500, the Agravic Speed Ultra Evo enters completely new territory for trail footwear.
Some runners will see it as excessive.
Others will compare it to Formula 1 technology—expensive, limited and designed to push innovation forward before elements eventually trickle down into more accessible shoes.
That's exactly what happened on the road.
It may now be happening in trail running too.
Hold W Club's First Take
Without testing the shoe, it's impossible to say whether adidas has genuinely created the next benchmark for trail racing.
But that's almost beside the point.
The Agravic Speed Ultra Evo signals something bigger.
For years, brands have focused on making trail shoes tougher, grippier and more protective.
adidas is taking a different approach.
It's asking whether the performance gains we've seen on the road can be transferred to the mountains.
If the answer is yes, this could become one of the most influential trail shoe launches of the decade.
If not, it'll still be remembered as the moment brands stopped treating trail running as an afterthought—and started pushing innovation as aggressively off-road as they already do on asphalt.
