Puma Fast RB Nitro Elite LD Review: A Rule-Breaking Racing Shoe You Can Actually Lace Up

Introduction

In the second half of last year, Puma launched the Fast RB Nitro Elite, a deliberately rule-breaking carbon plate racing shoe: a stack height well above the World Athletics limit, three carbon plates in the midsole, and no laces at all. The new Fast RB Nitro Elite LD keeps all of that rule-flouting DNA but adds laces, which turns out to matter more than you might expect.

The whole point of the shoe is a question: what happens if you simply ignore the regulations that cap racing shoes at 40mm of stack and a single carbon plate? World Athletics introduced those rules to rein in the record-chasing wave that followed modern carbon racers, and Puma’s answer is to build something that openly breaks them. Only 1,000 pairs exist, it costs £300 in the UK, $350 in the US and €350 in Europe, and it is as much an eye-catching concept as a daily racing tool.

Design: Three Plates and a Lot of Foam

The numbers are dramatic. The Fast RB Nitro Elite LD stands 58mm tall at the heel and 46mm at the forefoot, a 12mm drop that puts it 6mm over the regulatory limit under the forefoot alone. Inside the midsole sit three carbon plates: two confined to the forefoot and one full-length plate running the entire shoe. The foam itself is Puma’s nitrogen-infused Nitro Elite, arranged in a large block at the heel and two further chunks under the forefoot.

The heel is sculpted into almost pronged sections at the bottom, creating a kind of tripod with the forefoot. That geometry produces a pronounced forefoot rocker, and it leads to one of the strangest details of the whole shoe: standing still, the heel does not touch the ground at all, hovering above the forefoot until your weight lands and rolls you forward. A huge cutout through the midsole trims a little weight, though not much, because this is an incredibly heavy shoe: 363g (12.8oz) in a UK size 9 / US size 10.

Rounding out the build is a thick layer of Puma Grip rubber outsole with genuinely reliable traction, plus an Ultra Weave upper. The laced version improves fit and lockdown noticeably over the laceless original, which some runners found slipped at the heel. When you are standing on that much foam, a more secure feeling matters, and the grip outsole adds to it.

Fit and Sizing

Sizing follows normal Puma fits. A UK 9 / US 10 worked well in the usual size; some other Puma racing shoes, like the Nitro Elite 3, have run slightly large, but neither version of the Fast RB caused problems. With the laceless original, the temptation is to go half a size down for extra security, and some runners did report slippage, but the laced LD version removes most of that concern.

The lockdown is genuinely better, especially for keeping the foot from shifting laterally when you take a corner at speed, which is helpful on a stack this high. The heel held nicely on the run and there was enough toebox room. If you pick one up, stick with your normal Puma size, and only consider going half a size down if you typically run small for your size.

How It Feels at Speed

To test the shoe properly, a short taper track session was run: 5 x 800m at 2:45 with 200m float recoveries at 50 seconds, about 5K of quality in total, finishing around a 17:17 5K overall across roughly 5 miles. That is a reasonable pace for a shoe this odd, and the experience was genuinely strange.

For a heel striker who transitions through a midfoot landing at speed, there is effectively no midfoot here. You land on those pronged stilts at the back, get kicked onto the exaggerated rocker, and the three-plate lever takes over. That rocking motion from the heel unlocks the best ride; hitting the forefoot squarely on your toes produced less bounce than rolling through the full lever.

The bounce is enormous, almost overwhelming, but it is not enough to counteract the weight. Everything hangs off the front of the shoe, so each time you lift your toe you feel that mass pulling you back down. A high-cadence, shuffle-style runner may unlock less of the fun; a looser, more explosive stride could get more out of it. Over longer reps there were moments where the shoe almost took over and you could lock into a rhythm and cruise along at speed, but those stretches never lasted long, and the weight always dragged you out of them.

One genuine positive: it is surprisingly stable. The wide forefoot, one reason the shoe is so heavy, and the stabilizing rear prongs make it feel secure even during a hard session in marathon taper week. It is also fine for easy milling around, where the bounce makes slow jogging oddly entertaining.

Should You Buy It?

As a racing shoe, this is hard to recommend on pure performance. It is nearly double the weight of Puma’s own Fast RB 2 and the Deviate Nitro Elite 3, both of which are more effective legal racers, and even lighter, bouncier wild cards exist elsewhere, like the Mizuno Wave Rebellion Pro line or the Hoka rocket X 2.0. On a street course, every corner would break the rhythm this shoe needs to feel good.

But the Fast RB Nitro Elite LD was never really meant to be the shoe elite athletes race in. It is a limited-edition concept, a statement about what shoe design looks like when the rulebook is ignored, and for the 1,000 people who can find a pair, it is a genuinely fun, surreal piece of kit. There is real value in Puma experimenting this way, and some of the ideas here could plausibly filter into its legal racing line in future.

Conclusion

The Puma Fast RB Nitro Elite LD is a fascinating oddity: three carbon plates, a 58mm heel, huge bounce, and a weight problem that no amount of foam fully solves. It is enjoyable to run fast in, surprisingly stable, and utterly impractical as a serious race day choice. If you can find one of the 1,000 pairs and want the most conversation-starting shoe on the start line, it delivers exactly that. If you simply want to run your fastest, Puma’s own legal racers remain the smarter pick.