Article by Michael Ellenberger and Sam Winebaum
ASICS GEL-Kayano 27 ($160)
Stats
Official Weight: men’s 11.1 oz / 315g women’s 8.8 oz / 249g
Samples: 308 grams / 10.86 oz US men’s 8.5
Midsole Stack Height:
Women: Heel: 24mm Forefoot: 11mm, 13mm drop
Men: Heel: 22mm Forefoot: 12mm, 10mm drop
Widths: D=Medium, 2E=Wide, 4E=Extra Wide
Available now including Running Warehouse here. $160
Introduction
Sam: When a shoe gets to 27 editions, the 2nd longest “run” of any current run shoe. and is ASICS best selling shoe at running stores, something must be up. Yet I have never run it, been tempted by it and I have been running longer than 27 years that’s for sure!
So when ASICS asked Michael and I to test we said OK, not exactly looking forward to it as the Kayano is known as a support stability shoe and isn’t the lightest out there at 11.1 oz but it is the lightest Kayano with a massive looking exo-skeleton heel and substantial mid foot Trusstic plate under foot.
Strangely it also sure also looked sleek with a low profile engineered Jacquard mesh upper with a not ridiculously plush looking collar. Neither Michael and I need or rock support stability shoes much and when RTR tests I often end up the guinea pig for them with Michael also occasionally headed to that side as well.
Could there be more than met the eye, could there be a real good reason for 27 editions and still very popular. Were we shoe snobs?
We tested it and were frankly surprised in mostly pleasant ways by this highly refined shoe. Cleverly ASICS offered to give us and the history and answer questions after we tested.
The Kayano Trainer (picture below) was first launched in 1993 with a design mission of having the ultimate in comfort, durability, and protection.
The designer Toshikazu Kayano, yes the shoe is named after him, served 23 years as head of product design and development for overseas markets and is now curating ASICS Sports Museum archives came up with a radical initial design that yes featured an external exoskeleton, as still now in at the heel as still now to provide not only functional long term support and durability but I would say visual cues that the Kayano was meant to do exactly that.
The original named GEL-Kayano Trainer launched at the then astronomical price of $130. It hasn’t gone up that much since then with the Kayano 27 at $160.
To this day the core values of the shoe to be the ultimate in comfort, durability, and protection.
have remained the mission, yet the technologies continually evolved.
Further. over those decades, the ASICS Sports Science Institute has refined its research around gender specific differences in biomechanical needs applied to shoe design even within the same model as here. This means the women’s Kayano 27, in addition to gender specific lasting, has softer FlyteFoam with 2mm more of it at the heel and 1mm less at forefoot. while the structure of the mid foot plastic Trusstic piece has a different design focused on forward motion support with the men’s focused on inside arch support.
Michael: Sam about covered our backstory, but unlike the guru himself, I have run in the Kayano once, many years ago (I believe it was the Kayano 15 or 16), simply due to the fact that my preferred trainers at the time - the ASICS GT-2000 and DS-Trainer - were sold out at my local running store. So, I trained in the (back then) very clunky Kayano, a shoe that is basically unrecognizable from what ASICS is offering in the 27th iteration. Let’s dive in!
