Puma Fast-RB Nitro Elite PR 'Lime Pow'
Colorway: Lime Pow/Poison Pink/Black · Style code: 379554-01 · Release date: August 27, 2024 · Price: $2104 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Puma Fast-RB Nitro Elite 'Black' (397384-02) · Puma Wmns Fast-RB Nitro Elite PR 'Lime Pow' (379555-01)
Every super shoe on the market is designed around a ceiling. World Athletics caps midsole stack height for road competition, and the entire category has spent years working out how much foam and plate can be packed under that limit. Puma’s answer was to ignore it.
The Fast-RB Nitro Elite stands 58mm at the heel (eighteen millimetres above what the rules allow), which makes it ineligible for the races it otherwise resembles. Inside sit three separate plates, sandwiched between layers of Nitro Elite foam rather than the single curved plate most racers use, and the upper is a laceless mesh reinforced with taped strips, held shut by fit rather than by lacing.
Puma released it in August 2024 in a run of a thousand pairs across two colourways, priced at 350 dollars. It is a demonstration piece (an argument about what a shoe could do if the rulebook were not in the way), and the brand marketed it in exactly those terms.
This is the brighter of the two, in lime pow and poison pink over black.