Dragonfly 2 vs Zoom Mamba 6

The Nike Dragonfly 2 is a distance track spike, built for the 1500m up to the 10,000m rather than the flat-out sprints. Underfoot you get a slab of ZoomX foam paired with a Pebax propulsion plate, so it feels far closer to a super racing shoe than the bare, punishing spikes of a decade ago. That is the whole idea. You keep the light, locked-in, aggressive feel of a track spike, but the ZoomX gives you a little forgiveness so your legs are not shredded over a longer effort. At 145g it is genuinely light, and the 0mm drop with a low 19mm stack keeps you right down on the track for a fast, connected feel. This is a race-day tool, not a training shoe. If your event is 1500m and longer and you want a distance spike that lets you hold pace when it hurts, the Dragonfly 2 is one of the most trusted options out there. Sprinters and 800m specialists will want Nike's more aggressive Air Zoom Victory 2 instead.

The Zoom Mamba 6 is Nike's distance and steeplechase spike, a running shoe built for the longer end of the track: 3000m steeple, 5000m and 10000m. Where a pure middle-distance spike like the Air Zoom Victory 2 is all aggression, the Mamba trades a little of that snap for a shoe you can hold form in when the laps stack up. The spike plate is firm and locks you onto your forefoot, so every stride turns over quickly and cleanly. At an RRP of £100 it is one of the more sensible buys in the distance-spike world, well under the price of the carbon super-spikes. In our view that is the point. This is a racer for club runners, students and county-level athletes who want a proper, fast track shoe without paying elite-tier money. It will not flatter a weak final 200m the way the priciest spikes do, but for honest distance racing it does the job and keeps doing it.