Mount to Coast R1/R1R - Going way beyond, with options

My initial impressions of the Mount to Coast R1 after 30.7km (19.0mi) and the R1R after 34.1km (21.1mi)

0:00 Intro
0:20 Background and disclosure
1:49 Specs
3:00 Upper
5:31 Midsole technologies
10:05 Outsole(s)
11:07 Ride differences
12:58 When to choose the R1 or R1R
14:28 Lacing options
15:44 Non ultra distance use cases
16:46 Thank you Mount to Coast
17:51 Outro

Disclosure: The Mount to Coast R1 and R1R shoes in this video were provided by Mount to Coast for review, with no additional payment or compensation. Mount to Coast has no editorial control or preview of this video before its publication.

Product images courtesy of Mount to Coast.

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Intro & outro music from Epidemic Sound:
In the Dark - Purple Dive

🤙🏻

[linzhuo]

Such a pleasure working with you, Chris! Thanks for all your inputs and feedback.

[zixednatz]

Looks awesome. Something you can even wear with jeans.

[gijssmets]

As an ultratrailrunner who has to train on roads/gravel a lot, this really speaks to me. Hope they come to Europe soon. Great video! Edit: it seems they are sponsoring the 6-day worldchampionships in Hungary right now ( Go Mathieu Bonne 🥳🇧🇪) so they are doing some things over here in Europe.

[Johnnydodgin]

Super insightful observations as always Chris. An endurance road shoe makes for an interesting design solution. 🤙🏻

[TolunayOrkun]

I have the R1 (black colorway) and I really enjoy the ride.

I think I will change the laces to traditional lace. In particular, I found the plastic piece a bit hard to move to adjust the laces at will. Good intention but not working as well.

Another thing is that there is an underlay under the laces (inside the shoe) where it makes the U at the bottom, is rubbing the top of my foot a bit on my right foot. I am actually surprised that does that as it is an ultra shoe. Possibly an issue with my pair. I hope it will break down in time and I am wearing the shoe with thicker socks but it was pretty hot here in Texas. Personally, I think the upper could be thinner, lighter and more breathable. Perhaps in the next version.

Overall, I am pretty impressed with the shoes for being the first shoes of a new running shoe company. Well done.

[RunnerDad]

Good breakdown. I’m not sure it will fit my low volume foot. But interesting that they are going after a pretty niche part of the market.

[brianreiter]

It’s fascinating that a company would start up to target ultra road racing specifically. I would not have thought the addressable market would be large enough.

[dynamike]

Love my R1, the colourway is so good with all white and a touch of black to finish it. One issue with the R1’s CPU outsole is it’s super loud and squeaky when you walk on certain surfaces (like smooth tiles), a bit of a pity as it would have passed perfectly as a daily non-runner too. Performs really good though.

[zive]

Thanks for the comprehensive comparison and another quality review. 30km might be early to make the call, but curious which version you expect to have greater longevity when running on tarmac. Cheers!

[santiagochavez]

Thanks for the review, Iv been excited about the R1R! Do you think that the rubber will widen the use case for these shoes to include mixed terrain runs that go from road, to fire road, to light trail?

[Wings_nut]

Thank you for clearly differentiating the R1 and R1R. I knew that the R1R was coming out soon, but I wasn't sure which shoe to go with for my challenge this fall. I may have mentioned after your S1 review that I will run a fasted 5x5: five marathons in five days while fasting. Now that you've reviewed all three M2C shoes, I'm convinced that the R1 is the way to go since the courses I'm running are all tarmac. The next question is whether I should use the R1 for all 131 miles, or should I rotate it every other day with the Superblast to allow the midsole to relax. Thoughts? Thanks, Chris.

[TimGrose]

I've also got the R1 and S1 but been a bit embarrassed to do a video on them as have only been doing a few short slow runs in recent times due to Achilles type issues. I think I might now be able to give them a better go as it were. That said, so far I noticed that the R1 and S1 are not overly different in weight so wasn't really convinced that you could not just use one or the other for training and racing - whichever you liked the more. So am a little confused here by adding in another option which is seemingly even more just subtedly different. Was never convinced with this sort of model with the Metaspeed Sky or Edge. Just seemed to confuse runners and most ended up in the Sky anyway. I wonder if this would be the case here. If I look at two near identical shoes I am almost certainly going to choose the "lighter" one especially if billed for racing. That all said road ultra racing is pretty much a non existent activity in the UK. So I kind of feel if these shoes ever end up getting sold in the UK, I think it needs a bit thought to the marketing of a shoe which sounds like could be a good long distance trainer especially if you are not overly sold on the hype train high stack ones like the Superblast or, in my case, they do not my size which thankfully Mount to Coast do. Guess another factor is that for 99% of runners ultra road racing is essentially going at a rather easy pace or even walking for a long time. As such it is a very different type of "racing" to my say regular 5K and 10Ks with the odd HM and Marathon now and again. That said one assumes ultra road racers would (other than using Mount to Coast shoes) tend to use a "standard" marathon racer or maybe something like the Superblast or maybe even just whatever "daily" trainer they like to run in generally.

[iakona]

How is the heel stability in these different models, R1, R1R, S1, etc? I don’t like shoes with wobbly heels, even if I’m trying to strike more forefoot or midfoot, and I will tend to collapse inward with very unstable shoes. For example Brooks Hyperion Max 1 felt too wobbly in the heel for me. I do fine with most neutral daily trainers like Saucony Triumph 20, Ride 17, Mizuno Wave Rider. But even the gel in the Triumph 20 felt a touch wobbly to me.

[therapygrind]

The nursing home down the street called and they want their shoe back! I lived in a few countries near the Equator in Africa in the '80s and it seemed like almost all (90% or so) of the cars were the color white (less sun attraction/heat absorption)....is that explanation/rationale behind the look of the shoe, reduce heat absorption for these road ultras?

[Chungdol]

I know this question is very very mean...

But: there are so many new and little brands out there... yes, they make good shoes... but what differs them to more etablished brands?

[i.p]

A pity they don't sell in Europe.

[Wings_nut]

Argh. I used your non-affiliated link for the R1, but the M10.5 is not available. I left my email for the notification.