Sitting down with Blue Benadum, you immediately get a sense of energy and passion that runs through everything he does, even through a virtual meeting screen and from thousands of miles away on the West Coast of the USA. Having previously been at Nike, after co-founding the infamous Speed Project and alongside a career as an elite runner and coach, Blue has found his way to R.A.D., one of the leaders in the gym and fitness gear-space. Their newest launch is a flight into the unknown – a performance running shoe, their first entry into the running universe.

We caught up with Blue, one of the leaders in the development of the R.A.D. UFO Trainer, to learn more about this new venture, how R.A.D. have developed into running, and how he combines his background in running coaching and mechanics to build the latest innovations in training shoes.

Runlimited: Obviously R.A.D. is a new brand in the running space. People will likely be familiar with them from fitness and gym training, but I’m excited to pick the move into running apart a little more. But firstly, how did you get involved, personally?

Blue Benadum: I got involved meeting Ben [Massey, CEO and Founder of R.A.D.] and loved what he’d built. It’s not a trend chasing brand. We see so many brands chasing trends. They're really like a skate or punk brand. They're not trying to be cool for the sake of cool. They just like actually don't give a f—! 


It piqued my interest, and then I saw the product and realised they needed help. At the time they didn't really understand running. But you could tell they really had a solid team of designers, with some of the best in the industry, just focusing efforts into fitness. For running they needed confidence, information and direction. That’s where I stepped in. I think the UFO is a great example of it finally coming together.

RL: On that point, it seems like you're the Running Swiss Army knife at R.A.D., you do a bit of everything. What is your specific role? With R.A.D. and more specifically with the product? 


BB: I came on to consult for R.A.D. as they developed their running line but I realised they're going to need a lot more than that. My first official role was as Product Line Manager for: basically, identifying what the running world needs, what RAD could provide and what are the products that we would make? We outlined three models that they already had and I basically helped them align what they were: from geometry to foams, basically the ins and outs of the shoe.

Now my role is the head of the REDs. That’s the Running Exploration Department. And that's basically where R.A.D., as a brand, meets the road, for product and community. 


RL: You also have a lot of background as an athlete [Blue has run 2:23 for the marathon] and a coach. How does that help your role developing product?

BB: When I was at Nike, I was a coach and running specialist for seven years alongside my own running. As a coach I was working with running mechanics since as an athlete, the way I got faster in the marathon was really through honing my mechanics. 
I had a coach that worked with me which led to coaching myself. Mechanics is what I love to geek out on. So that's  what I bring to R.A.D. I always think, when we're making a running shoe, why are we making it in a certain way? 

RL: Tell us more about that, what  are some of the things you and the team did to create an idea and build this product? Could you give us an overview of it?

BB: It would be so easy to follow the super shoe trend, and a lot of it's interesting because when you have the budgets of the big brands, you could throw everything at the wall and see what sticks – as a smaller brand we don't have that opportunity. We had to get very sharp on, why we really want to make this
. It's going to take us two years to make this, and we only get one chance, so we need to be a lot more informed. 

The UFO is that. We wanted a long distance trainer. We loved the idea of these versatile do-it-all trainers that were built through the evolution of foams in the space that was happening, how you can take a lower layer of PEBA and make it firm and then have a more comfortable top layer. 
That was our first inspiration, something that you could train in at all paces. 


We played with the geometry, too, making a much longer, more gradual, rocker so that wherever you're hitting the ground in the shoe and wherever you're taking off on it, it feels comfortable. By focusing more on the transition - from from landing to toe off - whether you’re a heel striker or forefoot striker, you land into the foam and it pops you back out. I always think we do have to design the shoe to be able to deal with differing running styles, right? Like the longer heel bevel on this one was to ease that landing for the people landing more in the heel. 
But for the forefoot landing, removing some of the heel that's beneficial with less weight in the back of the shoe. So it benefits everyone. 


It's a 38mm-30mm (forefoot and rearfoot stack heights, respectively) stack, so there's a lot of foam there. But we wanted to keep its rigidity to give that toe off. 

Underfoot, the whole thing feels really soft. You get this soft fall in, but then it's like you're right out of it, it’s really responsive. We work with Helux Labs in Santa Barbara, California to test how we perform. Against all other foams and brands on the market in terms of softness and energy return and we're some of the softest and highest energy return of anything out there.

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RL: Coming into it with your experience in running through like your own athletic career and your professional experience, like, what was your biggest goal with developing this shoe? 

BB: I think that's a great question. 
We wanted to develop a shoe that you'd want to use for all of your training runs. There's so much great stuff happening in shoes right now and there's such a great evolution in the Supershoe category. In our opinion, we are not ready for that. 


Instead we saw a place for a training shoe that was quite super, but didn't have the plate. Something that improves running the economy. The biggest thing was how do we reduce fatigue over distance? 

Very specifically, what we wanted to make was a long distance trainer that made you feel better the longer you ran – whether that's a 10 mile run for you or whether that's a 30 mile run you should feel like you don't want to rip your shoes off. 

I was talking to our head of community, Omar Gonzales, about how old racing shoes used to just leave your feet either blistered or bloody. That was just like par for the course! You don't have to have that anymore. 
We wanted to make a great training shoe. The training is where you spend most of your time so let's put all of our resources there.

RL: Was that the ‘why ‘of getting into running for R.A.D? Was it identifying that gap in the market or was there something else? 
Obviously running has grown so much, but why now? 

BB: R.A.D. wanted to get into running before I was involved, and I think they brought me in because they wanted to get into running. 
 Ben loves running. He is a crossfit athlete and what sets him apart is his ability to do a lot of running without sacrificing his power and strength . So he always had this natural love for running.

And when they made that first running shoe, he really cared about being a performance brand that could deliver a product that the best in the sport would use to perform in. That's why they engaged myself and other consultants and why I came on to work full time. 
I'm just the conduit to getting these shoes on the right people. 

Our other thing is we want to stay very close to our retail relationships like Runlimited. We have five in the world, with Runlimited, The Exchange Running Collective (Nashville), Running Bear (Manchester), Running Wylder (San Francisco) and Interval (Edinburgh). These spaces are our true conduit to the people and how we're going to get feedback up the chain to evolve our products. 


If you don't love it, if it doesn't excite you to get out the door, we're not even making it. And then if it doesn't perform once you're out the door, then we're not making it.

RL: You mentioned the foam you've tested and how it's very, very competitive, if not exceeding a lot of other brands. But what is the standout for the UFO outside of that? Is it one specific thing or is it that entire package that you've put together? 

BB: A big thing that R.A.D. is all about is celebrating the euphoria of sport. Something that Ben and I talk about is the emotional connection that you have with your tools as an athlete, whatever your sport is. As a runner, that's your shoes, right? We wanted to make sure that we had an emotional connection. 
We asked, what is that? What creates that connection? Obviously, it's the feel and it's the performance. 

Specifically, in the UFO it's what I'm calling the transition. 
There's something special about the way you roll forward. For most of your spectrum, even down the easy, all the way up to like tempo pace, it’s designed to be encouraging and fun, from like landing to toe off in that, it just pops you right back out of it. And that's what makes it special. 

But going back to emotional connection, that’s where, I think, we’ve really nailed it; it starts with the aesthetic. One thing that Ben and Tom have is a very unique perspective on aesthetics, and every R.A.D. that comes out, it just looks a little bit different than what you see on the market. The other piece of that is colour. 
And we're definitely hitting above our weight in the colour department. We have Vanessa Altierre out in Portland and her vision in colour is insane. 


All those things lead to that emotional connection because you see it first, and you're like, “oh, whoa, that's really bold!” When we made the prototype, I watched one of our testers running around the room, and I was like, “actually, it's so cool and weird!”.

An emotional connection is always at the centre for everything we do. If you don't love it, if it doesn't excite you to get out the door, we're not even making it. And then if it doesn't perform once you're out the door, then we're not making it. I think this shoe will allow runners to do more of what they love to do.

Almost unintentionally, or as a secondary consequence, the insane thing about the UFO is durability. 
My wife got 2,000 miles out of a single pair. We weren't intending to do that, but through all of our testing, they seem to stand up to it all. I put 1,300 miles on my pair. The only reason I stopped wearing them was because I ripped the outsole because I started wearing them on trail to see if I could destroy it. 
I got to 1,000 miles and thought “I'm going to take this thing on the trail because I’ve got I got to destroy them!”. But Charlie's got 1,200 miles out of his. 
Omar got a 1,000 out of his first pair. So we have a bunch of people that've got over 1,000 miles of use from them. 

RL: What does the development process look more broadly like for a shoe, say the UFO you've come into running shoes? 
This is the first iteration of a running shoe for Rad. What's that development timeline? Where do you even start?

BB: We have a five-year strategy. We do a brief first, which is usually an exercise where we look at the running market and how we see ourselves as a brand versus what we want to do and like how we want to do it. Our perspective is currently ‘when they zig, we zag’, we're not a trend follower. We're a company made up of athletes who really love sport and yes, we want to sell product, but it's not like we just want to put out shoes just to make money. Ben really gave a s— about sport and he founded R.A.D. because he didn't feel other brands were speaking to him as an athlete.

It’s always important to remember that foundation because when we do a brief and we start the process of thinking about a product, it's always through the filter of “how is it better for athletes? How is it better for the sport?”. Everything starts there. 


From that we create a brief of the product that we want to make. 
And then it goes through the team. And then that goes to the designers. So when the brief gets handed off, it's a two-year turnaround of development which includes the whole process of testing. By the time it hits the market, it's 24 months from when we hit off the brief to when it hits the market.

We have to keep it focused though. We don’t have the power, like some of the big brands, to throw everything at the wall and hope it sticks. That’s why we keep things centred on the community and athlete-first.

RL: I can imagine the brand has got to be really intentional. Hence why R.A.D. brought on people like yourself first rather than just thinking ‘right, let's try and make any old running shoe here’. 

BB: That's the point. 
Instead of doing testing with, I don't know, 100 people, I want to go and get 10 people that are really investing in what we're doing. We can have them really test all of our shoes. The idea of the Running Exploration Department came from: how can we test with athletes that are a little bit more invested and be more invested in them? 


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Join us at Baker Street on 16th October for the launch of the R.A.D. UFO Trainer. Details and sign up are here.

Interview by Liam Dee
Images courtesy of R.A.D. and Adrian Varzaru

With thanks to Blue Benadum and R.A.D.