Photos: Hoka

Hoka made a name for itself with its plush and comfortable shoes, carving a lane to compete with the Nikes and Adidas of the running world. While the company has a great collection of fast shoes, Hoka also has an extensive lineup of comfy rides that are excellent for long runs and easy miles. One of Hoka’s top stability shoes in recent years has been the Gaviota — a reliable shoe that has won over many runners in its time.

Since it’s such a popular model, it’s no surprise that Hoka recently released the sixth iteration of the shoe. Slowtwitch got the chance to test the shoe before it hit the market, so here is everything you need to know about the all-new Hoka Gaviota 6.

The Tech Stuff

Hoka isn’t trying to re-invent the wheel (or the Gaviota) with this latest version of the shoe. The Gaviota 6 does have some updates from the 5, but overall, the two shoes are quite similar. Like the Gaviota 5, the 6 has a 6 mm drop. It also has the same CMEVA (Compression Molded Ethylene Vinyl Acetate) midsole as the fifth Gaviota, giving it a tremendous amount of cushioning.

The post Hoka Drops the Gaviota 6 — A Plush and Reliable Ride for Your Everyday Miles first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Photos: Suunto

Suunto has long been producing sports watches, but in the past couple of years, the Finnish company has been diving into a new space: headphones. This is a relatively new venture for Suunto, but they’re already delivering top-of-the-line products, including the Suunto Aqua headphones, which the company released earlier this year. Slowtwitch was lucky enough to put these headphones to the test, and they did not disappoint.

Getting Connected

When I got the Suunto Aqua headphones (US$179), I scanned the instructions and set out for a run. They had battery life (they can last up to 10 hours on one charge) and they seamlessly connected to my phone, so I had all I needed to enjoy my run.

The post Suunto Aqua: The Headphones That Will Keep You Locked in Wherever You Train first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Photos: Suunto

Suunto has been a big name in endurance sports for years, and many of their sports watches are extremely popular in the world of triathlon. In 2025, the Finnish company released the Suunto Run, a lightweight sports watch that is made for runners (as the name suggests), but can track training and racing in other sports just as well. Slowtwitch was given the opportunity to test out the Run this fall, and it lived up to the Suunto name, delivering on all fronts.

Suunto Run: The Basics

If you’ve used a Suunto sports watch before, you’ll know what to expect with the Suunto Run. Suunto wearables are typically reliable and easy to use, and that’s exactly what you get here. There’s no setup or customization needed before using this watch (you can, of course, select what units of measurement you prefer to use in training), meaning you can set off for a swim, bike, run or other kind of workout as soon as you take it out of the box.

The post Suunto Will Win Triathletes Over with Its Latest Running Watch first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

When it comes to the dedicated GPS sport watch category, there are the three brands who lead in their expertise in the room: Garmin, Suunto, and Polar. And then there’s also pressure coming from other major electronics manufacturers, like Apple and Samsung that drive both the top and bottom of the market.

And then there’s COROS. The manufacturer sits in an interesting place in the market. They offer a lot of the key functionality that you spot in most of the Garmin line-up of watches, but at a significant price offset relative to the equivalent Garmin watch. Let’s take the newly launched COROS Pace 4. It’s $249 USD price point means that the direct comparison Forerunner model is the 165, which is $50 more expensive and has less activities able to be tracked in it (or at the same price point, but you don’t get music storage with it). The Vivoactive 6 is also $50 more, and comes closer on features, but the case is more lifestyle than activity oriented despite the additional features.

But there’s pressure everywhere. The Apple Watch Ultra that I got last year was free with my phone upgrade, and despite the limited activity functionality it is by far the most accurate optical heart rate monitor I’ve ever used. My benchmark sport specific watch is a Fenix 5 that I can’t kill (and trust me, I’ve tried). So does the COROS Pace 4 stand out in any way beyond price point?

The post The COROS Pace 4 is a Great Watch at a Budget Pricepoint with One Big Catch first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Let me lead off by offering a bonafide mea culpa to Salomon.

I had originally thought that the brand had only sent me the Aero Blaze 3 for review over the summer. It was all part as we were packing our things to make our move 3000 miles westward to Slowtwitch’s new Pacific Northwest Division, leaving behind the log cabin and dirt roads that we’d called Tundra Division for the last seven years.

So then color me shocked as I was setting up my new indoor training area that I found a box labelled “athletic stuff” that our movers had packed. And inside, neatly stacked, were six pairs of shoes. Right on top was Salomon’s Aero Glide 3 — the big brother to the Blaze 3.

Oops.

So a day late and a dollar short, here’s Salomon’s flagship road training shoe, which brings plenty of surprises with it.

The post Salomon’s Aero Glide 3 is My Sleeper Shoe of the Year first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

The answer to the question of “what makes a HOKA running shoe unique” used to be a simple one. It’s a shoe with a maximum amount of cushioning, a shockingly light weight for said cushioning, and plenty of platform stability to go with it. And that formula, for the most part, has stuck around as the brand has grown to sell nearly $571 million last quarter — up almost 35% over 2024.

I say for the most part as, well, HOKA makes some shoes that are decidedly unlike their trademark brand motif. There are shoes like the Torrent, which trades out typical HOKA downhill running cushioning for a more traditional trail running platform. There’s a Mary Jane version of the Bondi. And there’s the whole track and field collection.

And then there’s HOKA’s take on plated shoes. Many of HOKA’s plated shoes have come up firmly on the traditional side of HOKA footwear. The Rocket series, for instance, comes across as soft and stable. The revised Cielo X1 also heads down that rabbit hole. And we would be remiss to not mention the illegal for competition Skyward X, which has all the cushioning your heart could ever desire.

So it’s in that vein that along comes the HOKA Mach X 3. You would think that, by sharing the name with the standard Mach series, that many of its characteristics would come along for the ride. You’d be half right. And ultimately, that means you’d be half wrong, too.

The post The HOKA Mach X 3 is Fast, But Comes With an Asterisk or Two first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Product launches are critical for brands within the endurance sports sphere. Get it right, and you have a product that can catch fire. Get it wrong, especially if you forecasted for big sales and you swung and missed, and you have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of inventory and no good way of cleaning up the mess left behind besides discounting. And then it’s nearly impossible to remove yourself from the cycle of “new –> discount –> even bigger discount” until, well, you’re no longer a company that ever sells anything at full retail.

It’s in that context that Salomon has been edging further and further into the road shoe category. The brand, most famous for its trail product, has been trying to grab a larger slice of the multibillion dollar run shoe pie. Perhaps the brand most successful at making that pivot is HOKA, which sold almost $571 million in product in Q2 2025 alone. For comparison, Salomon’s parent company, Amer Sports, reported sales of $411 million for the entire “Outdoor Performance” category over the same period. That section of the company includes Salomon’s ski business.

The post The Salomon Aero Blaze 3 is a Great Shoe. Is That Enough to Make the Brand Road Relevant? first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

We’ve all heard it plenty of times over broadcasts, threads, and stories here on Slowtwitch: when it comes to long-distance triathlon racing, bike for show, run for dough. At the professional level, if you aren’t a world-class triathlon runner, it’s going to be a hard day at the office just to continue to make money, let alone win a race. And with the advent of the handicap system that is now determining IRONMAN Worlds qualifying slots, speed is more critical than ever.

Well, folks, this run shoe is for the rest of us; for those of us who may not respond well to carbon footwear. For those of us who aren’t going to run under 3:30 off the bike. Or for those of us who might just want a little bit more cushion for the pushing.

Enter: the HOKA Mach 6. And it’s probably the shoe that most of us should be looking at.

The post Could This HOKA Be the Ultimate IRONMAN Shoe? first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Hayden Wilde on the run at the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Taupo, New Zealand. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon

Kiwi triathlon star Hayden Wilde has provided updates in his recovery after a bike crash with a truck in Japan left him hospitalized and in need of surgery in early May. When the accident first occurred, it was unclear how long it would be before Wilde could return to training, and although it has been a slow process, he is officially back swimming, cycling and running. His return to racing is likely still a while down the road, but his progress points to a successful comeback after such a shocking and unfortunate accident. 

The post Hayden Wilde Continues Road to Recovery After Bike Crash, Surgery first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Daniela Kleiser of Germany celebrates winning IRONMAN 70.3 Valencia on April 27, 2025 in Valencia, Spain. Photo: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images for IRONMAN

German pro Daniela Kleiser is one of the fastest middle distance runners on the circuit–actually she is the fastest. Currently ranked number one in running in the PTO world rankings, the 28-year-old had her breakthrough victory this year at the IRONMAN Pro Series 70.3 in Valencia, where she ran a 1:13:37. She backed that up with 1:15 at Jesolo and Eagleman (where she finished fourth at both) and clocked another fastest split at the San Francisco T100, outrunning eventual champion Julie Derron by 49 seconds. Even after three race weekends in a row, she took the second fastest run at T100 Vancouver, only losing 27 seconds to Derron. 

The post Faster than Derron, Faster than Knibb: Daniela Kleiser is the World #1 Runner first appeared on Slowtwitch News.