R.A.D Running's third shoe, the MALLOW, completes its rollout on Thursday 28 May with a global launch through the brand's own website, a week after select retail partners began stocking it on 21 May. The MALLOW joins the UFO racer and the SYNTH speed trainer to give R.A.D a three-shoe lineup that the young brand can finally call a full performance range, and the daily training slot it fills has been the conspicuous gap in that range since the UFO's debut.
The brand has built the MALLOW around a 42mm heel stack and an 8mm offset, putting it firmly in the modern maximalist trainer territory that Hoka's Bondi, Asics's Novablast and Nike's Vomero have already cut up between them. Where R.A.D has tried to differentiate itself is in the midsole material. The SwellFoam compound the company is using is described as 40 per cent bio-based, blending ethylene-vinyl acetate with olefin block copolymers in a recipe designed to keep the foam bouncy through repeated long runs while pushing the brand's environmental claims a notch further than its rivals.
A 302g weight on a US men's nine puts the MALLOW about average for the category, lighter than the Asics Novablast 5 and the Hoka Bondi 9 and broadly comparable to the New Balance Fresh Foam X 1080v14. The geometry is more interesting. R.A.D has built in a dynamic toe rocker designed to encourage forward roll-off at slower tempos, while a heel clip and a plush collar provide the rear-foot stability the brand has identified as the chief failure point of cushioned trainers at the top of the stack-height scale.
The £130 (US$150) price slots the MALLOW between the brand's existing models and is a deliberately competitive number against Hoka, Asics and Nike daily trainers that now routinely retail at £140 to £160 in the UK. R.A.D has marketed the launch through a short animated character, Mal, that has appeared across the brand's social channels in the run-up to Thursday, in a campaign that leans on the playful aesthetic the brand has built since its inception and the recent profile boost from sponsoring a handful of high-profile UK and US run clubs.
The MALLOW will be available in Cloud Gray, Ultrablue and a small number of additional colourways at launch, and stock at the brand's London and New York pop-ups has already been confirmed for the Thursday morning opening. Reviewers who have spent the past three weeks on test pairs have largely treated the shoe as a credible entry into the daily trainer market rather than a category-redefining release, with the brand's growing distribution and the bio-EVA story carrying more weight than any single performance claim. Running Lookout will pick up a full-length review once a retail pair has gone through a four-week mileage block.