Adidas Takumi Sen 11 (and a mini Adios 9 review)

This is not the most popular shoe in the Adidas lineup, but it’s perennially one of my favorite shoes that Adidas makes. This is the Takumi Sen 11, and this year, it’s a case of – the more things change the more things stay the same.

0:00 intro
0:48 disclosures
1:19 specs
3:09 What’s It Like
7:37 Adios 9 Mini Review
10:29 Takumi silo
12:07 Buying Guide
13:19 vs Streakfly 2
14:42 vs Cielo Road

disclosures: I don’t remember how this shoe got to me. I want to say that I bought these shoes myself, but I can’t find any record of it in my email, so they must have been sent to me. However, regardless of how a shoe ends up on my desk, no one is paying me to make this video or to include their brand in this video. No one previewed any of my footage or my thoughts before this video went up on YouTube.

Thanks for watching! Leave a comment to let me know you stopped by!

Catch the livestream https://www.youtube.com/c/kofuzirunclub/

subscriber count at time of upload: 226,150

end card music:
Jim Yosef – Checkered
https://soundcloud.com/ninety9live/jim-yosef-checkered

This is not the most popular shoe in the Adidas lineup, but it’s perennially one of my favorite shoes that Adidas makes. This is the Tacumi Sen 11. And this year, it’s a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same. I can see all the birds and all the trees. Feel everything around me. Love the information of the universe inside of me. Help me beat the out of my Yo, what’s going on? My name is Kapuzi and I’m an elite runner who reviews running shoes here on YouTube. And today I want to talk to you guys all about the Tacumi Sen 11. But before I give you my thoughts on this shoe, I do want to go over some disclosures. I’m actually not sure how this shoe got to me. I could have sworn that this is a pair of shoes that I bought myself, but I couldn’t find any record of it in my email, so it must have been sent to me unless I bought it in person. But in either event, regardless of how a shoe gets to me, no one is paying me to make this video or to include their brand in this video, and no one’s going to get a chance to preview any of my footage or my thoughts before you guys get a chance to see this video on YouTube. So, with that disclosure out of the way, let’s talk about the Tacumi Sand 11. Let’s start with the specs. There’s a 33mm stack height shoe with a 6 mm drop giving us 27 mm of stack height in the forefoot. And in this shoe, we’ve got two main components. We’ve got light strike pro, which is Adidas race caliber foam. And then we also have energy rods 2.0. That’s a material that’s supposed to function like a carbon fiber plate, but instead of a plate. These rods that mimic the shape and placement of the bones of the foot. On the outsole to protect this light strike pro, we have continental rubber and light traction. It’s a combo that we’ve seen on the Adios Pro 4, and we’re seeing a very similar combination of materials here and a very similar layout as well. There’s a lot of similarities when you’re looking at the bottom of the Tacumi Sen and the Adios Pro 4. Moving to the upper, there are more similarities again with the Adios Pro 4 and kind of a lot of the updates to the Adidas racing lineup. We’re seeing the light lock upper in the Tacumi Sen, which is a bit of a departure from the types of upper we have typically seen in the Tacumi Sen series. We’ve got a very thin tongue that isn’t gusseted, but is sewn in on the side, so it’s not going to move around too much. And it is a full-size tongue. And then around the heel collar, we’ve got a couple of bumper pads to help ensure good fit, but otherwise, this is a very floppy heel, which is something that I like to see in all my race product. And of course, there’s the little peekaboo that’s on the bottom side of this piece of felt that is supposed to make it a little bit softer in the part of the shoe that may brush up against your Achilles. This year, this shoe comes in, at least for me, at a much lighter weight. I weighed this on my scale for my US men’s 9, which is a reference size. Mine came in at 6.5 oz or 184 g. Now that we talked about what this shoe is like on paper, let’s talk about what the shoe is like on foot. The TUMI 71 remains my favorite 5K 10k racer. In fact, I raced a 5,000 m on the track and I really enjoyed using this shoe there. I didn’t think that uh being in spikes for about 20 minutes for me was something that my body could really handle at my age and so having the Tkumi Sen was a perfect option to choose for that. And I’ve also been using the Tacumi Sen 11 in the way that I typically use Tacumis as someone who doesn’t race a ton of 5Ks and 10Ks on the roads, but does a lot of marathon workouts. And so I’ve been using it for my threshold mile repeats, and I absolutely love it there. Even though the spec sheet says that there is the same amount of foam in this shoe as there is last year, it feels like there’s more foam underfoot. It feels like the shoe is a little bit more forgiving than it was last year in the Tacumi Sen 10, which I think was probably the harshest of all the Tacumi Sens that I’ve tested. Now, granted, the Tacumi Sen doesn’t really change drastically from year to year. So, calling one the harshest and calling one the softest isn’t like a huge delta between those two things, but I am feeling a lot more softness in the experience this year. Even though it feels more cushioned than last year, the shoe still has really great pop. It still feels very agile and it still feels like a shoe that’s relatively low to the ground. I feel like I’m getting a lot of road feel without getting a lot of road harshness. And now the compression and decompression is a little bit different than the kinds of compression and decompression that I typically like to see in racing product. I typically love to see like a giant crumple zone where a bunch of foam is crumpling really quickly and then decompressing really quickly to make sure that nothing feels muddled or mushy. The experience in the Light Strike Pro in the Tacumi Sun 11 makes it feel like I’m not moving the foam as much. It’s almost kind of like a a sineuy or a chewy kind of like compression and decompression. And ultimately, the new Tacumi Sen reminds me of the older Tacumi Sands in a really good way, which is unusual when I think about it because of the fact that there have been a lot of very slow and subtle changes in a very specific direction. When we look at some of the early Tacumis and we look at today’s Tacumi Sen1, the oldest Tacumi that I still have in my collection is the Tacumi Sen 8. And some signature features of this shoe other than the light strike pro and the energy rods in this shoe is that there used to be a very small landing pad up front and a very large medial side cutout showing you that this shoe is really intended for you to be running fast where you’re up and spending a lot of times in your ground contact time on the toes and pushing off from the front of the shoe. And that medial side cutout is going to help make everything a little bit easier to bend. And then as you’re pushing off, it releases and it snaps back, giving you just a little bit extra on that push off. And then since then, every year, the size of the 4-foot landing pad has increased and the location of the cutout has gone further and further back towards the heel and getting smaller each year as well. Until this year, there isn’t even a medial side cutout at all. Instead, we just kind of have like this little peekaboo window to let us see those energy rods. Now, functionally, there is a bit of a notch. It’s not like a definite channel through the side of the shoe like we’ve seen in previous years. So, functionally, there still is a bit of a cutaway, but it’s definitely the smallest one yet. And I feel like in addition to that 4foot landing area getting bigger and bigger, this landing pad had also gotten wider. And so, I think what they’re trying to do is match up more of the experience that you’re getting in the Tacumi Sen with what we’re seeing in the Adios Pro 4. And at the same time, the chemical composition of Light Strike Pro has changed over time from what we saw in the Tacumi Sen 8 to the Tacumi Sen 11. So despite some of the changes that we’re seeing, I am still feeling like they’re staying true to the essence of Tacumi, if not bringing it back to some of those sensations that I remember feeling when I ran in those earlier Tacumi. As a longtime fan of the Tacumi Sen 11, I am enjoying that the changes make it feel more like the old shoes that I really love. Now, before we wrap up this video, I want to take a moment to talk about another shoe that a lot of you guys ask me about kind of at the same time whenever you guys have questions about the Tacumi. And because I’m not going to do a separate review of that shoe, I felt like I’ll kind of do a mini review of this shoe here, as well as talk about kind of how I see all of these shoes fitting together within Adidas. And that shoe is the Adios is the Adios version 9. I’ll hold it over here cuz it’s a black shoe and I have a black shirt. Now, I believe it is the lowest stack height shoe that Adidas has to offer. And it’s gone from being the marathon racing shoe to basically kind of like a cheaper version of the Tacumi 7-Eleven. I feel like that’s kind of like the best way to think about these two shoes. Uh this is like the 5K 10k racer and this is kind of the knockdown version. Not necessarily a training companion, but I feel like these are two shoes that do kind of the same thing. At least as far as I’m concerned as a guy that focuses mainly on marathons. Uh but there are some other slight differences to it as well. I mean, in addition to being a little bit shorter of a static height shoe. It’s 27 mm in the heel versus 33 in the Tacumi, there aren’t any energy rods in this one, but it does still have uh the light lock upper. Has a little bit more padding in the tongue and through the heel cup to make it a little bit more comfortable and kind of daily trainery. Uh but it still has the light lock upper and it’s still using continental and light traction on the bottom for grip. And it still very much has like a racing feel. And so I would use this shoe now in that 5K road race or shorter or I think it’d be an excellent option for someone to take onto the track. And so if you are doing a lot of workouts on the track, but you don’t want to be in spikes, then I feel like the Adios 9 is a very neutral, very sockite type of feel that will feel fast, feel low to the track, and feel like you’re having a lot of that ground feel uh without having to actually put on spikes. So, it’s not quite as aggressive there. This is a shoe that’s been interesting cuz it’s kind of came onto the market in the US for like a very short minute and then it pretty much disappeared. So, it’s hard to find in the US now. You’re going to have to look overseas to vendors who ship to the United States. That’s how I got mine. And I think that pretty much price is going to be the main consideration when deciding between these two shoes. But I also feel like even if you can spend $180 to get to the Tacumi 71, some people that might still nevertheless appreciate the Adios 9 are people that want to stay lower to the ground, want more of that race flat feel and don’t necessarily want energy rods. Maybe they don’t really do anything for you or maybe you find them to be interfering. Uh then I feel like this very neutral option in the Adios 9 could be for you. And so the way that I kind of mentally in my mind keep these shoes separate uh is that I like to think that Adidas has kind of built a little bit of a Tacumi silo. And I feel like you have the Tacumi Sen, which is like kind of the center piece of it. The knockdown version of that would be the Adios 9. And then I think there’s a a shoe that I’ve been referring to in multiple videos as the Super Tacumi and that’s the Evo. And I specifically mean the Adios Pro Evo version one. The version two I think changed quite a bit. Uh and so I don’t think it fits as nicely as part of a Tacumi silo. So I think of these shoes as like Tacumi Tacumi Sen and Tacumi Super. I feel like the geometries on all these shoes are very similar. I feel like the sensation that you’re lower to the ground for racing in any of these shoes feels similar. So, I feel like there’s a like a a brotherhood amongst these three shoes here, even though only one of them is called Tacumi. But I feel like this is kind of like the uh the track version, the road version, and then the marathon version. Although, for me, I think that the Evo one is too aggressive for me to take for the marathon distance. I was able to take it to the half marathon distance and set a half marathon PR in this shoe. It was very fun to run in. But maybe I liked running in it so much because I’ve always enjoyed what the Tacumi Sun had to offer. And so when I think about the Tacumi, these are shoes that I always also think about at the same time. Now, let’s wrap up this video by going over the buy guide, and we’ll also discuss some alternatives. The Tacumi Sen 11 continues to be an excellent 5K, 10K road racing shoe. Or for those of us who are training for marathons and don’t race as many 5Ks, the Tacumi 71 remains a really fun choice to take along with you for some of your faster workouts. This shoe retails at $180, which is, I think, the same price this shoe has been in for a long time. And I think that it’s a fair price for what you’re getting in the shoe. Old school 5K racers who prefer a true race flat will probably prefer the Tukumi San 10 if you can find any of those left in your size. Or if $188 is more than you want to spend, you can save a significant amount by going to the Adios 9. This is a shoe that you lose a little bit of stack height and you don’t get energy rods, but there’s a lot of similarities in terms of the spirit of these shoes. It’s a flatter road flat than the Tkumi Sen 11 is. And this is a shoe that I actually got for my daughter for whenever she has to race on the roads or on asphalt and when she’s not racing in spikes. Although this is not the one I got for her. This one is mine. She has her own pair in her own size. Now, let’s talk about some of the alternatives that are out there outside of the three stripes to see what the rest of the market has to offer. Now, the first shoe I want to talk about decided to go the opposite direction as the Tacumi. The Tacumi this year got a little bit softer, a little bit more livable. This shoe got a lot more aggressive compared to its initial version. This is the Nike Street Fly version 2. It’s got Zumax foam and a carbon fiber plate and a very snug, a very stripped down racer upper. To me, this shoe feels like pretty much a true race flat. It might as well be spikes. As far as I’m concerned, it’s listed as a 5K 10K racer, but I think of it as a mile road racing shoe. maybe a 5K shoe cuz I feel like it’s just so harsh. It’s a very aggressive shoe that has me up on the toes and makes me feel like I’m pretty much running just on a carbon fiber plate. It is fast and it is fun for as long as you can handle the shoe. But kind of for the same reason that I mentioned I didn’t want to run a 5,000 meter race on the track and spikes because I felt like that would be just too aggressive for my body to handle. For me, a lot of the times the Street Fly 2 is just a little bit too aggressive to handle. So, if you are thinking that you don’t like the changes of the Kumi 11 or you don’t like the sound of the changes, then you might want to look at the Street Fly 2. And then there’s not a lot of other shoes that I can think of that are true alternatives to the Tacumi Sen. And so I think this is the same shoe that I might have talked about when I talked about the Tacumi Sen 10 because I think the 5K 10K racing market is a little bit on the undererve side as far as shoes specific to that distance. And so we’ll talk about the Hoka Ciello Road. And this shoe is another road racing flat. Uh but to me it feels low to the ground like a race flat. The upper is nice and snug and very minimal, just like I like a racing upper to be. But I just feel like there’s a lack of aggressiveness in the shoe. I think there’s a little bit of a shank in this shoe, but there isn’t a carbon fiber plate. I just need something for this shoe to be a little bit more explosive. But if you don’t like the interference of carbon and you just want to have something that feels like an old school race flat, this could be something you would consider. But those are my thoughts on the Tacumi Sen 11. Let me know in the comments down below if you have any other questions about this shoe or any of the shoes that I talked about today. Or better yet, stop by the live stream that I do Mondays and Thursdays over on the Kuzi Run Club channel. Love to answer any shoe questions you have over there in the chat. That’s all for today, everybody. Thanks so much for making it all the way to the end of this video. Hopefully you guys are staying safe out there on your runs and I will see you in the next one. Yo, what’s going on? [Music]