File It Under Footwear: Nike's Apex Stacks Its Air Two Layers High and Leaves the Alphafly 4 Behind

Nike has a new name for the archive. The Apex has two layers of Air cushioning stacked one on top of the other, and Nike measures it against the Alphafly 3. By that measure, the Apex gives a runner back 40 percent more of each stride's effort than the older shoe did. The Alphafly 4, Nike's own more recent model, improved on that same baseline by 10 percent. On the same yardstick, the newcomer's gain is four times larger than its sibling's. A desk that keeps track of who wore what and when treats a well-built running shoe as a piece of design like any gown, and here the craft is in the build underfoot, where the doubled cushioning does the work. From the Palm Beach bridges to the loop in Central Park, readers who log their miles before breakfast will know exactly what that extra spring is worth.

With reporting from WWD.