A dawn climb in the Dolomites, from the pass up to the Forcella, where limestone measures every footfall and a racing shoe stops being a spec sheet and becomes a sensation.
In partnership with Kailas FUGA.
Early morning at the Passo Pordoi. The cable car station is still shut, the car park nearly empty, and the air at 2,239 metres enters the lungs with a thin cold that July, down on the plain, forgot about a long time ago. I lace my shoes sitting on the low wall, back to the wind. In front of me trail 627 sets off in packed-earth steps between the pastures, then rears up towards the gully that leads to the Forcella Pordoi, six hundred metres higher.
I start running.
The first minutes on grass don’t say much. The foot is held tight, wrapped in a lacing system split into two blocks that adjust separately, one across the midfoot and one over the instep: Kailas FUGA calls it AWS 3.0, for Adjust Whole Sole. At first I file it as a complication. A quarter of an hour later I read it for what it is — a constant stream of information about where my foot is inside the shoe.
Then the grass ends.
Two Hundred and Seventy-Five Grams That Stop Existing
The gully is a funnel of gravel and pale rock steps, with switchbacks so tight you have to recalibrate your drive at every turn. This is where the weight on the spec sheet, 275 grams for a EU 42 (UK 8), leaves the realm of numbers. Climbing six hundred metres in under four kilometres means lifting that weight a few thousand times, and the difference between a 275-gram shoe and a 320-gram one arrives around the thousandth step, when the hip flexor sends its first signals and I notice I’m still running where I normally walk.
Under the heel there are 35 millimetres of midsole, 30 under the forefoot, with a stated drop of 5 millimetres. Those are almost maximalist numbers, and that much shoe between you and the ground usually charges you in stability. Here the charge is close to nothing, because the foam is held in by sidewalls that rise to cradle the heel, and because the foot stays wrapped inside the shoe rather than perched on top of it.
The Limestone Gives Something Back
At the Forcella, 2,848 metres, I stop just long enough to feel the sweat cooling under my shirt. The refuge is already open.
Un caffè, per favore.
I climb a little further towards the Sass Pordoi to take in the whole view, then, obligatory photo taken, turn straight back.
Below, the gully I’ve just come up is about to become a procession of walkers who’d rather sweat than pay €32 for the cable car to get slightly higher.
I fill the flasks, close the ADF (All-round Dial Fit System) on my vest and start down.
And the descent is where this shoe says the most interesting thing it has to say.
The midsole is supercritical TPU foam — thermoplastic polyurethane expanded with pressurised gas — and Kailas FUGA states an energy return of between 70 and 72%. Translated into sensation, that number means the gravel gives back part of what you put into it. On ground that usually swallows everything, it comes as a surprise.
The foam stays reactive, slightly firmer than the trail average. You don’t sink. On loose scree that is exactly what you want, because every millimetre of sink is a millimetre of contact that arrives late. It’s a detail that at 2,800 metres, on a few hours’ sleep — race conditions — counts more than it sounds. The shoe was awake before I was.
The X-Shaped Plate
Inside the midsole sits a moulded carbon fibre plate shaped like an X, widening towards the forefoot and the heel and leaving the middle free. The geometry answers to a function. A full plate stiffens everything, and in the mountains that stiffness turns into a problem the moment the ground stops being predictable. The X adds drive, but more than that it removes corrections: torsional rigidity isn’t total, and that gap is all the room the foot keeps for negotiating with a crooked stone.
On scree this registers as a drop in mental work. You stop choosing every step and start trusting the sequence.
Underneath, the outsole is Vibram Megagrip in the Litebase version. The lugs are laid out in five distinct zones, 4 millimetres deep on the inside and 6 on the outside, with an area given over to braking. On limestone left damp by the cloud wrapping it, the least friendly surface in the Dolomites at that hour, I never felt the foot go.
The Price of an Object That Knows Its Job
Two things need saying. The first is the upper: the XDiMESH breathes remarkably well. The same thinness that lets the foot breathe through twelve hours of racing — the EX PRO exists to race ultras — is what keeps you comfortable the whole time, without abrasion or blisters, and always delivers the high-level performance for which the shoe is designed. The second is the price: €250 on the official site puts this shoe at the top end of the market.
Worth looking at those two together, because they describe the same decision. A shoe that weighs 275 grams, with a carbon plate, an evolved midsole and a mesh you can see light through, is an object that has worked out what it is for and given up everything else. It isn’t the shoe for three hundred kilometres a month on mixed ground. It’s the one you keep for the days when the mountain is there to be run rather than walked, and on those days it gives you back every gram you’re not carrying. Specialisation has always had a cost, and here it is more than justified.
I get back to the pass with the cable car already running. The cabins climb towards the 2,950 metres of the Sass Pordoi with families and cameras inside, while down on the forecourt the monument to Fausto Coppi is a reminder that for a century this pass has been a place people come to climb fast.
I set off again, loosening my legs on a loop towards the Viel del Pan: around two hundred metres of climbing, all of it at the start. Then a runnable dirt path that hands you a perfect vantage point over what is left — sadly — of the Marmolada glacier.
I come back quickly. It’s nearly lunchtime.
I sit on the low wall and loosen the first block of the lacing. Done. My calves are grateful.
I think back over the run. I looked at the landscape almost the whole way. And that is the biggest compliment I know how to pay a pair of shoes.
