At the risk of being out of line, I am quite surprised that the shoe has a porous sole. They are light and comfy, I use them for running/plyometric training, but I am and will potentially always be in shock that the sole allows leakage in even an only damp environment.

I bought the hyper speed 2 mostly as a very light-weight training shoe/racer in addition to my NB 150 RCs.

On the whole I felt it to be a veryy good shoe. The lining/support around the heel cup can be slightly prominent and may be problematic if you have achilles injuries but isn't a great worry.

Whilst being fairly light-weight I do feel the shoe has some limited protection (it certainly isn't a "road" version of a track spike) and cushioning which definitely helps protect the leg on longer training runs and tempos. The shoe has very little heel to toe drop which makes it very suitable for forefoot strikers. I felt it had a very even strike and helped me drive off well with the heel having enough cushion that if I did need to fall back to heel striking I was still able to do so in relative comfort.

There are two main negative aspects to the shoe. It is very definitely a road shoe with very little traction and it will slip like crazy over mud and the like. Definitely not for XC racing! The other point linked in with this is that it has holes in the sole which help keep the foot cool in hot weather but if you end up running through a mudle or worse wet mud your foot will get wet with the mositure seeping upwards which isn't the most pleasant of feelings.

On the whole a great shoe but almost exclusively confined I feel to long track reps or the road but as a road tempo shoe I don't think there's any better.

High Profile Users: Ryan Hall