On Track Nights Vienna | Meta Endurance

On Track Nights touches down in Vienna with the promise of fast times and great music!

Oh, Vienna

On Track Nights started in LA, toured London and Paris before heading to the home of classical music for what promised to be a high tempo night of racing and dancing.

From paced 5,ooo m runs to give everyone the best chance of a PB to short, punchy 800s and the ever intriguing spectacle of the steeplechase where chaos and calamity are never far away, the crowd was in for a treat.

Specs: the Adidas Boston 12 is lighter and lower

At 286g in my size US11 / EU45, the Adidas Adizero Boston 12 is much lighter than the Boston 10. Note that I did not test the Boston 11 (and that was on purpose as I didn’t see much changes compared to the 10). My Boston 10 came in at 333g which added to the clunkiness of the shoe.

The Boston 12 also gets closer to the ground with a 2mm reduction of stack in the heel. It moves from the 39mm heel in the Boston 10 and 11 to 37mm and changing the 8mm drop for a 6.5mm one instead. This remains quite far from the Boston “standards” but it definitely helps on the weight side of things.

The Men’s 5,000m Final

With the likes of Paul Chelimo, Egide Ntakarutimana, and local legend Sebastian Frey, the On Track Nights men’s 5000m in Vienna was sure to be a great race. The headline event of the evening.

The WaveLight was set to 13:07.00, the world athletics qualifying standard time. With such a strong field, the majority of the athletes were together up until 5 minutes into the race when the leading 7 started to pull ahead – Maintaining that 13:07.00 target pace.

Six and a half minutes in, the pacer left the race. Having dropped 5 meters behind the Wave Light Ntakarutimana made his first surge to try to get back up to the target pace and develop a gap between him and Chelimo. This began the battle between the two which continued for the rest of the race, as the two worked together to maintain that 13:07 pace, leaving the competition far behind.

Would On Track Nights Vienna deliver more qualifying times?

With 2 laps to go, Ntakarutimana urged Chelimo to take the lead as their pace started to drop roughly 5 meters behind the Wave Light, however, Chelimo didn’t take the lead, causing both to lose the momentum that they had been holding so well up to this point.

Going into the final 200 meters Chelimo made his final move, surging in front of Ntakarutimana, and the two finished with a rapid final sprint to finish the race.

Chelimo finished first in 13:03.12, setting down another impressive time just 2 days after having run a 13:06 in Oslo. On Track Nights delivered again!

The battle between the two leaders shows the greater experience Chelimo has over his younger rival Ntakarutimana, which may have given him an edge over those final 2 laps when they were racing neck-and-neck. Both athletes were able to get well below the world athletics qualifying time, will we be seeing them race again in Budapest?

Full Results

Results:

1^st: Paul CHELIMO – 13:03.12

2^nd: Egide NTAKARUTIMANA – 13:03.61

3^rd: Isaac KIMELI – 13:17.16

4^th: Maximilian THORWIRTH – 13:18.35

5^th: Shota NAKANO – 13:24.11

6^th: Yohei IKEDA – 13:24.14

7^th: Dominic LOBALU – 13:24.28

8^th: Tim VERBAANDERT – 13:27.13

9^th: Awet HABTE – 13:29.30

10^th: Emmanuel BOR – 13:30.05

11^th: Desire NIYOMWUNGERE – 13:30.74

12^th: Andreas VOJTA – 13:33.36

13^th: Mohamed FARES – 13:35.27

14^th: Emile HAFASHIMANA – 13:35.80

15^th: Francesco GUERRA – 13:35.93

16^th: Alberto MONDAZZI – 13:37.04

17^th: Shu HASEGAWA – 13:37.81

18^th: Jamal EISA MOHAMMED – 13:40.19

19^th: Kevin KAMENSCHAK – 13:40.19

20^th: Yamato YOSHII – 13:43.83

21^st: Filmon TEKLEBRHANBERHE 13:46.02

22^nd: Konstantin WEDEL 13:46.99

23^rd: Adam MAIJO – 13:51.08

24^th: Derba AYELE – 14:00.36

25^th: Eduardo HERRERA 14:02.81

26^th: Sebastian FREY – 14:10.40

Value for money and other considerations on the Boston 12

Let’s quickly add a point on the outsole before going into the money talk. Continental rubber has proven its strength on Adidas shoes and that German partnership provides with one of the best outsoles on the market. Not much too add here other than I’m glad to see the collaboration continues.

Now the price. €160/$160 for a shoe that can technically cover most of you training regimen. In a way it’s good value for money for people considering this shoe as their allrounder. But I would argue it’s not one as easy and recovery paces don’t work super well in it. Even with an easy day shoe or a racing shoe to complete the rotation, the price tag remains correct for what the shoe does. It can be a great endurance, long run, tempo (and even race day) companion. And long run is probably how I would use it, making the most of its light stability features.

One thing that I would really like to see improved is the comfort of that upper. There are worse uppers out there but let’s compare it to the better ones. In that price range you have the Endorphin Speed 3, the On Cloudmonster, the Asics Novablast (or Magic Speed). All of these shoes are more comfortable than the Boston 12 despite most of them carrying a lower amount of technologies. My point is: the Boston became a complicated shoe. There are so many elements in it, so many updates to this version in particular – whereas the core of the shoe, i.e. the last, the fit, seems to have been abandoned a bit.

Alex

28 years old

183cm (6′) – 68kg (148lbs)

Mid/Forefoot striker – Stride runner

Moderate pronator

@alexfilitti

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