Mizuno Wave Rebellion Pro Beta Review: A man, a tram, a canal, Amsterdam (Marathon)

What You Need To Know

World, meet the Mizuno Wave Rebellion Pro Beta

RYAN: If you’ve been around a while, you know how these reviews tend to go. We usually start with some kind of wild angle, like a reference to a movie or a TV show, and we hope that our fellow reviewers are willing to go along for the ride. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t, but it usually relies on a review being more than a solo effort.

This time, we’re going to do something a little different. Mizuno Boy (as I’ve been dubbed by my training partners) is throwing the regular format out the window in the name of talking about one of the most unique running shoes I’ve ever laced up. And honestly, that feels like a pretty good metaphor for the way that Mizuno approached its Wave Rebellion Pro Beta. If you’re not sure what I mean, you’ll understand soon enough.

Let’s get into a combination race recap and running shoe review. Sounds easy, right?

Wait, there’s HOW much Enerzy XP foam?

RYAN: Well, as it turns out, there’s nothing easy or straightforward about the Mizuno Wave Rebellion Pro Beta. The company has been chasing this aggressive, heel-less design for a few years now, and this third version is the most aggressive yet. When it arrived, I could immediately tell that Mizuno had cranked everything about its design up to a new level, from the zebra-like pattern to the absolutely massive mountain of foam underfoot. Top to bottom, it just felt wild.

So, I did what anyone would do – I laced up Mizuno’s highest-stack racing shoe for a twisty, turny 5K through the Maryland Zoo. Ya know, the type of thing that seems super safe in a shoe I’ve never run in before. Luckily for me, I didn’t bust an ankle a la our fearless raccoon, Robbe, but I quickly learned that maybe I need to measure twice and run once.

Well, by that, I mean that now I understand why most 5K or 10K racing shoes keep their stack height well within the World Athletics limits. Mizuno’s Wave Rebellion Pro Beta, on the other hand, sits at a sky-high 61 mm of foam in the heel, sinking down to 57 mm in the forefoot – you know, a full 21 mm above shoes like the Nike Alphafly or Adidas Pro Evo 1.

So, how is that World Athletics legal?

RYAN: Obviously, there has to be something illegal about the Wave Rebellion Pro Beta if it’s sitting on that much Enerzy XP foam, right? Well, it’s time to talk technicalities. Technically, the Wave Rebellion Pro Beta remains within the World Athletics limitations on heel stack because it, well, doesn’t have a heel. Instead, the bulk of the shoe’s foam sits toward the back of the arch of your foot, relying on an incredibly steep heel bevel to stay within regulations.

The result of Mizuno’s aggressive design is a racing shoe that feels more like you’re wearing a wedge – just without the heel. It basically makes it impossible to heel-strike because there just isn’t one to strike. You could land back there, but it’s not really going to help your stride so much as hinder it. That sharp bevel, however, is absolutely integral to the way that Mizuno keeps its racer street-legal, as the bulk of the foam sits between the forefoot measurement (about 12% of the way back the shoe) and the heel measurement (about 75% of the way back). So, because Mizuno is within the rules at those two points, the rest of the design can be as wild as it pleases.

Anyway, outside of the absolutely wild way that Mizuno skirts the rules, the rest of the Wave Rebellion Pro Beta seems pretty straightforward. It marks the debut of Mizuno’s nitrogen-infused supercritical Enerzy XP foam, offers a fairly standard (for racing) 4 mm drop, and uses a carbon-infused nylon Wave Plate for stability and extra bounce — all good things.

Well, does the Wave Rebellion Pro Beta work?

RYAN: Now, for the $250 question — does Mizuno’s absolute beast of a shoe actually work? Yes… but also no. I survived my loops around the Maryland Zoo, but I did so in second gear, fearing that if I hit top speeds, I wouldn’t be able to make it around a sharp turn. I was able to open things up once or twice while cruising down a long hill, but it felt like I was only getting a small taste of what the shoe could do.

So, I did what anyone would do: I took the Wave Rebellion Pro Beta for a longer run — a little effort called the Amsterdam Marathon. Alright, so really, the marathon was the entire reason I, Mizuno Boy, had the shoe to begin with, but still. I put in the weeks of training, spending most of my time in the Neo Vista and Wave Rebellion Pro 2 while saving the freshest miles of Enerzy XP for race day.

Then, it was time to get started. I kitted out from head to toe in Mizuno apparel, capping it off with the wild-looking Wave Rebellion Pro Beta, and headed for my corral in the Olympic Stadium to find the 3:20 pace group. If nothing else, I figured I’d start out hot and hope to ride my training to a PR.

At first, it went brilliantly. I held exactly the 7:35 per mile pace that I needed to, cruising through the 5K, 10K, and 20K marks without the sense of impending doom that my first marathon brought a few years prior. Maybe I noticed a little bit of quad tightness along the way, but it was nothing that screamed to abandon ship. I ticked off mile after mile, avoiding Amsterdam’s many tram rails while dodging fellow runners on increasingly narrow streets. Mizuno’s unique midsole structure did its job, keeping me on my midfoot and forefoot for as much of the race as I could maintain something resembling an efficient form — about 16 or 17 miles.

For that stretch, I felt like nothing would get in my way. My gels were going down smoothly, and the sips of LMNT I took kept me going while the gray, damp weather tried to slow me down. I spent just as much time enjoying the scenery as I did watching the 3:20 pacer ahead of me, but I knew the pain cave was coming.

I was riding high until I wasn’t

RYAN: Unfortunately, as the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed, a marathon isn’t 16 or 17 miles — it’s 26.2. That meant I had a long, long way to go when the Wave Rebellion Pro Beta started to fight back against me. The very same midsole structure that had previously kept me on the front foot was now pushing me backward each time I landed, using all 61 mm of foam as a massive brake pedal.

I managed to fight through the increasingly weird sensation for another mile or two, sticking to the 7:35 pace that was slowly becoming harder and harder before I began to fall off. My pace dipped to 7:45 per mile, then 7:55 per mile, and finally settled somewhere around 8:15 as I neared the finish line and begged to be done. By this point, I knew that if I stopped running, I wouldn’t start again, and I’d be walking to the finish for my second marathon in a row. Thankfully, I didn’t stop. I slowed, but I kept going. Different parts of my legs tightened and then relaxed to let me know that I was alive (but felt like I was dying), and my friendship bracelets felt more like pleas than reminders.

Before long, I was back in the Olympic Stadium, shuffling through the last 200 meters of my first international marathon, begging to stay comfortably under a 3:30 finish. I made it across the line with a time of 3:26:16 and immediately looked for my opening to take off my shoes.

What had started as an awkward shoe to walk in but became a good shoe to run in had turned into a terrible shoe to finish a marathon in, and there was no chance I’d keep walking in it afterward — though I did have a shiny new marathon PR to take home. I also had a knot in my left quad that took four days to loosen up, but surely that’s not related.

Would I run in the Mizuno Wave Rebellion Pro Beta again?

RYAN: Riddle me this: If you run a 27-minute marathon PR in a shoe but can’t walk for a few days afterward (beyond just normal marathon pain), should you run in it again? Shortly after finishing the Amsterdam Marathon, my answer was a fairly resounding yes, but a yes with a pretty serious caveat — I don’t think I’d run another marathon in the shoe. A relatively straight, smooth 5K? Sure. A solid 10K when I want to go fast? I’d do that too. However, when I think about another marathon in the Wave Rebellion Pro Beta, my legs hurt almost reflexively.

At the end of the day, I think Dr. Ian Malcolm said it best when he remarked, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” He, of course, thought he was talking about dinosaurs rather than the most aggressive racing shoe that I’ve ever run in, but the point still stands. I can see why Mizuno gave the Wave Rebellion Pro Beta the stack that it did, and I can see how the structure would benefit a very specific type of runner, but that runner isn’t me — at least not over the course of 26.2 miles.

You can pick up the Mizuno Wave Rebellion Pro Beta for $250 from Mizuno by using the button below.