Rumors of Tracksmith’s new running shoe, the Eliot Racer, have been streaking around run club meetups and shoe forums since sometime in the fall of 2023. The Boston-based company only released its first shoe, a daily trainer called the Eliot Runner, the previous year, and even though the brand has been kitting out runners with racing sashes for close to a decade, the founder would tell you that footwear has always been part of the program.
Racing has always been Tracksmith’s thing, too. The competitive spirit that pushes amateur athletes to pursue lofty goals sans sponsorships is core to the company’s beliefs. Even Eliot, the name of the footwear line as well as Tracksmith’s hare logo, is a reference to Eliot Lounge, a popular post-marathon bar for runners in Boston. But making shoes takes a long time. (It’s almost ironic, given that the Eliot Racer would be all about speed.) At the 2024 Olympic Marathon Trials in Orlando, keen-eyed spectators got a first glimpse of the shoe, but the rest of us were left with the shadowy images that Tracksmith teased on its website, and no real promise of when we’d get to go take a pair to a starting line.
© 2025 Tanner Bowden
© 2025 Tanner Bowden
Now, another year later, that’s all over; the Eliot Racer is finally here. As are the final specs—much is in line with what we all know and expect a race day running shoe to be (PEBA foam, carbon fiber plate) but there’s also a few major departures from that well-trodden path. Earlier this winter I found myself at Miami’s Flamingo Park Track, lacing up in a pair for some 400s ahead of a 5k that weekend. Could a smaller company like Tracksmith make a shoe that holds pace when the competition consists of billion-dollar behemoths? There’s only one way to test a shoe like the Eliot Racer—train in it, then race in it.
Specs
- Weight: 7.7 oz (men’s 9)
- Drop: 7.5 mm
- Stack Height: 38 mm heel, 30.5 mm toe
- Materials: engineered woven upper, drop-in ATPU midsole, Pebax midsole chassis, carbon fiber plate, rubber outsole
- Size Range: 7 to 13.5
How Do They Look?
Tracksmith’s unique design perspective has always been one of the first things that set its apparel apart. Call it classic, New England-inspired, or nodding-collegiate; runners who know Tracksmith recognize it when they see it, whether by the hare logo or red stripe hang loop. The Eliot Racer has all these elements too, a thick gold sash acting as the primary bit of branding, even though it’s not really a logo. The Eliot Racer looks, well, sort of like the Eliot Runner. That’s alright though, that shoe is one of the best looking trainers out there.
It’s easier to talk about what the Eliot Racer doesn’t look like. Namely, every other new racing shoe that’s come out in the past few years. These “super shoes” show off their speed with Dayglo color palettes and super-thick slabs of midsole foam. The aesthetics of speed are decidedly sci-fi.
Not the Eliot Racer, though. But that doesn’t mean Tracksmith’s designers abandoned the materials and technologies that we’ve come to identify with race day record breaking; the shoe just doesn’t advertise them. The top-of-list innovation at play is a thick removable sockliner—that’s shoespeak for insole or footbed—made of ATPU foam that gives the Eliot Racer that same element of thick cushion (stack height is 38 millimeter in the heel) inside of the shoe rather than outside. It simplifies the build, removing glue from the layup, and Tracksmith says that testing has shown the design extends the shoe’s longevity. Pull it out and you’ll see the shoe’s carbon fiber plate.
