The RW Takeaway: The radical design is polarizing, but we found the shoe to be a speedy race day option for longer road races.
Key Tech: Grippy G3 outsole, carbon-infused nylon plate, Enerzy Lite midsole foam, high stack height
Race Tested: Mohawk Hudson River Half-Marathon in Cohoes, NY 1:27:30
I already know what you’re thinking: gimmick. After all, look at that funky heel bevel, the crazy plate shape, an exaggerated wishbone cutout on the sole, and the full-length lattice of nubby rubber. But all that adds up to an impressively fast—and fun!—racer. So fun, in fact, that we included the Rebellion Pro in our 2023 Shoe Awards.
Pros
- Thick foam provides lots of cushioning
- Springy underfoot sensation
- Lightweight
Cons
- Can be unstable
Key Specs
| Type | Road Racing |
|---|---|
| Weight | 7.5 oz (M), 6.0 oz (W) |
| Drop | 18.5 mm (M), 13.8 mm (W) |
The shoe has a massively thick midsole, but somehow Mizuno got it approved for racing by World Athletics (soles can’t be thicker than 40mm). That really only matters for elites who are winning races; nobody’s going to nullify your BQ if you lace up this chunky shoe. But, we have no idea how they got it approved because, in our lab, the heel on the men’s shoe stacks up at 52mm thick. We measure the heel as the shoe sits flat, which puts the thickest part of that midsole in contact with the ground.
And, on the road, we found that’s how it behaves. There’s no way anybody is heel-striking farther back on the thinner part of the sole at race paces. I wore the shoes for a tuneup half marathon in October and, running 6:30 pace, was kissing the ground right around the edge of that bevel with my slight heel strike. A tester much faster than me reported they felt a bump close to midfoot as they ran a turkey trot at low-5-minute pace.
The forefoot measured 33.5mm, meaning this shoe has an 18mm drop—that’s a ski jump! (Mizuno claims a 4.5mm drop, but that all depends on where you measure the thicknesses.) When you load up the bouncy foam, you literally get thrown forward to toe-off. The carbon-infused nylon plate makes that super-tall stack of foam more stable and creates leverage during the push-off phase of your stride.
Lighter than traditional rubber, the polyurethane resin outsole locked onto damp blacktop when we pushed the pace up a steep local hill on a lunch run. Testers appreciated its confidence-inspiring footing. “I used the shoes for a tempo in the rain one day and when I went over a wooden bridge that is usually very slippery, I did not feel too much slip,” one tester reported. “The grip kept me grounded and helped me go faster.”
Testers’ Feedback
Elias P. | Tester since 2021
Arch Height: Medium | Pronation: Neutral | Footstrike: Midfoot
“This shoe is unlike anything I have ever put on my feet. Totally crazy, highly-engineered super shoe with a stack height that makes even other super shoes look like flats. Compared to the Saucony Endorphin Elite (another shoe I tested), these are higher and have more cushioning. I’ve never run in plated super shoes before, outside of trying them in a running store, but I could tell these were well-built. Very fun to lace up and get rolling.
“I ran a turkey trot 5K in these at slightly higher than tempo effort (5:10) and, man, did they feel good. You can feel your legs just bouncing off the ground and the workload is noticeably much less, even than in something like the Saucony Endorphin Speed 2s. Straight up, I did not have to try as hard as in regular shoes.
“I did find it a bit hard to get up on my toes to do something of a kick because of the location of the ‘bump’ in the plate. Unlike Nike’s super shoes or Saucony’s (or any other I’ve heard of), where the ‘bump’ is [closer to the] forefoot, Mizuno’s is in the very back of the midfoot, closer to the heel. I didn’t think that would work, but it does. It’s great for a midfoot striker like me, and makes running at fast paces feel a lot more natural because you don’t need to be on your toes to enjoy the benefits.”
Theo Kahler | Runner’s World News Editor
Arch Height: Medium | Pronation: Neutral | Footstrike: Heel
“The form of the shoe was really fun. The obnoxious black-and-white splattered colorway grew on me a lot—my girlfriend called them ‘Dalmatian shoes.’ And the stack height was so comically large that wearing them was almost like a conversation starter. But they did their job and performed better than I expected. Since Mizuno is fighting an uphill battle in the super shoe wars, I think this shoe is a smart strategy to get people talking. These are by far the highest stack height shoes I’ve worn. I think they’re good for tempo runs/fartleks/long runs, but I wouldn’t reach for them in a speed workout. I’d want something more responsive, firm, and light. I will add, wearing the shoes while running didn’t feel particularly weird, but when I slowed down to a walk before and after runs, they felt like I was walking in platform shoes and felt very unnatural.”
Jeff is Runner-in-Chief for Runner's World, guiding the brand's shoes and gear coverage. A true shoe dog, he's spent more than a decade testing and reviewing shoes. In 2017, he ran in 285 different pairs of shoes, including a streak of 257 days wearing a different model.
