The new hotly anticipated running shoe from Nike looks a bit like a hovercraft and is guaranteed, like all Nike products, to turn heads. There’s just something different about Nike, a golden halo, perhaps, and the brand, since Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman, the advent of carbon plates and super shoes, that demands attention.
If it’s good enough for Kipchoge, it feels special, nearly mythical, when worn by you.
So how’s the shoe? The InfinityRN 4 ReactX is made with the ReactX foam, which apparently provides 13% greater energy return than than the previous Infinity iteration. It’s hard to quantify what that actually means but, in layman’s terms, the shoe is comfortable. It feels bouncy. Now, this is not a super shoe. The Infinity series is different than the Vaporfly, and it has a price tag to match. The Infinity is $100 less expensive.
More in line with the company’s ever-popular Pegasus series, I found the InfinityRN 4 to be stretchy and elastic, energetic—if that word makes sense. I could feel the energy return and, in their white, black and red colour scheme, I felt like I looked fast and sleek, and thus it helped me run that way. (That my race crew oohed and aahed when I first broke them out, didn’t hurt).
I’ve worn them on mile repeats for speed work (brutal), and my 30K long run, and I found them diverse enough for both tasks. Not having a carbon plate means you don’t have to cringe each time you wear your sneakers, wondering how much life the shoes have left in them after each run. With the InfinityRN 4, you can have a pair of $210 Nikes, and wear them like regular shoes, not have to save them for The Most Important Run of Your Life.
In conclusion, the InfinityRN 4, made from recycled material and foam designed to reduce carbon footprints (a trend all runners can get behind), is durable, slick, lightweight and pretty. Versatile and supportive, accessible and quick, the InfinityRN 4 is a great addition to the Nike shoe family.
May we all feel like Kipchoge some days.
