The Fastest Runners Wore These Shoes at the 2026 IRONMAN World Championship - Slowtwitch News
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The IRONMAN World Championship run course has always brought us some late-race heroics and drama. This year, Kona was no different, with the winning move in the race not happening until after mile 20 of the run course. We almost had both winning moves in the men’s and women’s races happening at the exact same moment on course; this writer can’t remember a time when that’s ever happened in Kona. Alas, the race had other plans.
But we’re not here to relive the race itself. Instead, we’re here to look at the shoes that the fastest runners in the field used this past weekend. As a reminder, this is not the top 10 finishers at the IRONMAN World Championship; no, we’re looking specifically just at the time they took to run the marathon. As has been the case for a while, we see a lot of variety amongst our top 10 men and women runners, with Adidas, ASICS, HOKA, New Balance, Nike, On, and Puma all represented. ASICS had the most athletes wearing their shoes, followed by On and HOKA, respectively. Something interesting, though: there’s no real consensus on models worn even within these brands, outside of “part of the carbon racing line.”
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