The Deviate NITRO Elite 4 Gets an Ekiden Colorway, and PUMA Dated It for the Week Japan’s Relay Season Opens

PUMA has the Deviate NITRO Elite 4 Ekiden dated November 15 in White and Lime Squeeze, in men’s and women’s versions of the same build. The name is doing real work. An ekiden is a Japanese road relay, run in legs rather than in one piece, and Japan’s ekiden season peaks between November and March. PUMA has put its race-day carbon shoe out in the week that season opens, in a colorway named after it.

The Deviate Elite is the conventional one in PUMA’s racing line, and that is worth saying out loud because the rest of the line is not. PUMA runs three carbon-plated road shoes at once. The FAST-R splits the midsole into two decoupled sections and is the shoe its marathon roster actually races in. The FAST-RB abandons the rules entirely, standing 58 millimeters at the heel with three plates, and PUMA says in its own announcement that it is not race legal. The Deviate NITRO Elite 4 is the one built to the letter of the regulation, 40 millimeters at the heel and 32 at the forefoot with a single carbon PWRPLATE, which puts it exactly against the World Athletics ceiling and nowhere over it. PUMA launched it in February with a redesigned plate it describes as stiffer and shaped to reduce stress through the metatarsals, and it lists the shoe at 170 grams in a UK 8 and 140 grams in a UK 4.5. The drop is 8 millimeters. Those are the numbers of a shoe built to be legal and light rather than to make a point, which is the opposite of what PUMA has been doing with the rest of the range.

The Ekiden pair is the most considered colorway the model has had. The knit upper is white with a lime underlay showing through, and a lime contour-line graphic runs across the quarter and up over the heel, the kind of drawing that reads as a route map before it reads as decoration. The formstrip is black with a lime flame edge where it meets the toe. A round black medallion sits high on the heel with a leaping cat inside it, and a polished bronze clip wraps the back of the heel counter. Underneath, the NITROFOAM Elite midsole is white where the plate sits and lime beneath it, with the carbon PWRPLATE visible through the arch and a lime PUMAGRIP outsole either side of it. Lime is a color PUMA has leaned on hard across its race-day shoes for two seasons, and on this one it is used as an underlay and a line rather than as a full coat, which is the first time the brand has made it behave.

What makes the naming more than decoration is the distance. The first ekiden ran in 1917, from Kyoto to Tokyo across three days and 23 legs, and the format settled into something built around five to ten legs of five to twenty kilometers each. The Hakone Ekiden, run every January 2 and 3 over 217.1 kilometers by university teams, draws television ratings Japanese broadcasters have put as high as 30 percent. A leg in that race is not a marathon. It is a hard twenty-kilometer effort on roads, handed over by passing a cloth sash by hand, and a runner who throws it instead of passing it is disqualified. A shoe built for that is being asked for a different thing than a shoe built for two hours of pacing, and the Deviate Elite, the lightest and most conventional of PUMA’s three racers, is the one in the range that fits the brief. The marketing is also pointed at the right country. Japan is the one market where a relay, rather than a marathon, is the race that stops the nation.

Retail is $250. That puts it under PUMA’s own FAST-R NITRO Elite 3, which the brand sells at $300 and sends to Berlin and Chicago, and in the same bracket as every other brand’s top carbon racer. PUMA put the European price at 250 euros when the model launched in February, and the Ekiden carries the same number in dollars that the inline pairs do, so nothing here is being charged for the story on the upper. For a colorway that will be on televised Japanese start lines inside six weeks, that is the restrained choice. PUMA could have called this a limited edition and charged for it, and it did not.

The Deviate NITRO Elite 4 Ekiden releases November 15 in PUMA White and Lime Squeeze, article 313705 for men and 313706 for women, both $250. Both are listed for pre-order on PUMA’s own site now, with availability dated to midnight Eastern on release day. No wider retailer list has been announced and no press release has gone out through PUMA’s media hub for this colorway.

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The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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