Craft CTM Ultra Carbon Unisex Spring/Summer 2021

First impressions

It’s a little hard to catagorise this shoe into either road or trail. It certainly performs like many of the latest carbon-plated road shoes but, with a sole that provides great traction on the light and drier trails. Ok it’s not for technical trails, but on paths, gravel and packed ground it’s fantastic.

The CTM in the name represents ‘Craft tailored motion’, hinting to the specific ride it provides. That’s a fast rolling and aggressive toe-off ride that’s very much down to the distinctive shape of the heel and steep toe-off. The EVA based midsole has a carbon-fibre plated embedded and that makes the overall gait of the shoe fast and ‘race-shoe’ tuned on push-off.

All that said the shoe does feel reasonably happy at slower paces too, unlike many ‘supershoes’ that need to be moving quickly to bring out the best in them. All this makes the shoe much more useable on a daily basis and more versatile in terms of where you can venture in it.

It’s been designed and developed in Sweden and takes on an undercover car testing distinctive camouflage which, in itself makes the shoe a little different from the norm.

Midsole

The energy return and take-off build through the Ultra Platform, the tuned Ultra Carbon Plate and the hyper-springy popcorn-foamed Ultra Insole. The high-caliber composition is then topped off with the one-piece fully engineered mesh Ultra Upper.

Upper

Super attractive engineered mesh upper, but this shoe is all about the midsole!

Sole

CTM Ultra Carbon touches the ground with a full-contact rubber traction outsole. Decent grip on dry trails also.

Technical info

Vault Foam™

Anatomic Racing Fit

Ultra Carbon Plate™

Ultra Trac Outsole