IceBug Zeal RB9X , Tested and Reviewed by Tanner Farenik

I was really excited about getting to try out the IceBug Zeals because I heard lots of good things about them. If you follow either of the Canadian superstar OCR athletes: Ryan Atkins and Lindsay Webster, you have heard about Icebug. A few of the key advantages I have heard about Icebugs are they have great traction but also the rubber is extremely sticky and provides amazing grip on obstacles. If you have ever wondered what Icebugs are like then I hope to share everything I can about them with you.

To start off when I picked them up from the post office I wasn’t even sure what the delivery was for. The lady at the post office handed me the box and when I grabbed it I knew it could n’t be the shoes as the box was insanely light, so I thought it was actually some clothes I was expecting. Much to my surprise it was the Zeals in the box. Maybe I was just that strong, which I doubt, but I was very impressed with how light they felt and that made me even more excited to get them on and try them out.

My first impressions:

• the shoe was extremely light,
• the studs looked like they would really dig into mud,
• the orange sole was actually pretty sharp looking,
• the outer mesh upper looked and felt very tough,
• the whole shoe didn’t have a lot of cushioning or material that would hold water or mud.

The fir st few times I took them out for a run was during the winter. I loved how light they were and how well the studs dug into the snow and and even pretty well into ice, considering they don’t have spikes. The only issue I had on those first few runs was a blister on my pinky toe but the issue wasn’t that the shoes didn’t fit or that they weren’t comfortable, the issue was the cold. It was about -15 C outside and I think for one the shoes hadn’t been broken in enough and the upper material doesn’t move as well in the cold as it does when they are warm. Also, because the shoe is so minimal my foot was cold too which didn’t help. That being said they aren’t winter trail shoes! They have no insulation and the materials are made for warmer weather. This winter I went to Texas and brought the Zeals with me so I could try them out in warmer weather to confirm my suspicions about the effects of the cold. They performed great! They were so much more pliable and conforming to my feet. The temperature was only a few degrees above freezing so it wasn’t like it was extremely hot but just warm enough that the shoes worked much better.

Over the next few months of testing out the Zeals I discovered a bunch more that I liked about the shoe:

• The heel cup was extremely comfortable and it really locked my foot in place so there was no slipping while I ran and moved around in them.
• The mesh material really did not hold onto any mud, it would almost immediately fall off as I started running.
• The mixture of the lacing system and the tough upper material really locked in the rest of my foot so there was no sliding around or toe jamming on the down hills.
• The lacing system was also very good at keeping the shoe snug with no openings for dirt, gravel and sticks to get in.
• The inside of the foot also had a protective rubber coating to protect the shoe from the rope burn that can happen if you use your feet at all to climb the rope. It will keep your shoe from getting shredded up by the ropes.

A couple things that I disliked about them were:

• The lack of cushioning in the sole. As a bigger guy, compared to most runners in the sport, I struggle to find that balance between comfort and minimal weight. Some people like a shoe to be absolutely minimal no matter how uncomfortable, others don’t care about weight and only care about comfort. I’m somewhere closer to the minimalist but I still need a little comfort. The Icebugs Zeals don’t have much cushioning.
• The drainage isn’t that good. Once they got wet they took a while to let all the water back out of the shoe. The outer material is great at keeping dirt from getting in but unfortunately that also makes it hard for the water to get out. There is a fine line between good drainage and keeping things from getting in, so its hard to say which is better. It’s no fun running with dirt, sticks or gravel in your shoes or with water logged shoes.
• The only other issue I had was the material didn’t really stretch a lot so if you tighten them too much and your feet are a little wider it can be uncomfortable but once I found the “sweet spot” they were very comfortable.

I was able to test the Icebug Zeals at my local OCR gym to see how they performed on different obstacles. This is really what interested me the most because in general, races are either fairly dry or they are beyond muddy that no matter the size of studs they aren’t going to grip, but not all shoes grip obstacles the same. I was seriously AMAZED at how well they stuck to the obstacles. I have tried a bunch of their shoes that either slip like crazy or they alright, but the Icebug Zeals had me feeling like Spider Man. I was almost able to just walk up the warped wall and if I wasn’t slightly scared of breaking an ankle on it I think I would have easily gotten up it. So any wall like the slippery wall or A-frame walls the shoes grip like crazy. I can’t wait for my first race so I can run up the wall without even using the rope! It’s not a great comparison but whenever I do a longer session on my incline trainer I have to wear these because once the sweat starts pouring, the treadmill belt gets soaked and any other shoe I have just slips. I have wiped out pretty hard a couple times until I decided to try these Icebugs.

The other obstacle which the shoes really helped on was the rope climb. The Icebug Zeals have some very sharp grips in the arch of the shoe for hooking onto ropes. They were almost like barbs hooking into the rope as I climbed and really made it effortless to hold on and saved my grip quite a bit.
The last important thing for an OCR shoe is the amount of water they retain. You really do not want a shoe that holds onto any water or at least as little as possible. So I conducted a little experiment to see how much water it would hold. I weighed the shoes dry then put them on without socks (just to make sure they didn’t affect the amount of water retained) and stepped into a bucket of water and stepped back and forth a few times to sort of pretend I was running or walking in water. Then I stepped out onto the ground and took about 10 steps to sort of replicate how much water comes out in those first few steps. Then I removed the shoes and weighed them again. Here are the results:

Dry Weight (grams): 270

Wet Weight (grams): 326

*This is after I dumped the last of the water out of my shoe that hadn’t drained out.

In my experience I haven’t found a shoe that has great drainage, keeps the dirt and rocks out and is also extremely durable. These Icebugs are very durable, keep the dirt out and are light but the trade off seems to be that they hold onto the water longer. Personally, unless you are running a race that has you in and out of water the whole race these shoes won’t get a chance to drain out like some others would but I have yet to run a race that wet, except maybe the Montana Spartan Beast.

The last thing I would say about the water is that you could poke your own drainage holes in them like I have heard some do,  BUT be very careful because it will most likely void any warranty and you are likely to just start letting in a whole bunch of dirt and little rocks.

All in all I think they are a fantastic shoe for soft terrain and pretty much any OCR that requires lots of grip on either the terrain or the obstacles. They have performed extremely well in all sorts of terrain and obstacles, they are very comfortable, and EXTREMELY light compared to other shoes I’ve worn. They don’t drain quite as quickly as some other shoes but they also don’t let in a bunch of rocks. The water will eventually leave but rocks won’t until you take your shoe off so I would go with the water myself. I expect these to last for quite a while and quite a few races. They really feel tough and built to last. I would highly recommend them to anyone that likes a low profile minimal cushioning kind of shoe. If you are a good runner and light on your feet these would be perfect. If you are maybe not a great runner and very heavy footed you might want to start with another shoe that has more cushioning until you are ready to move to a lighter shoe.

Tanner Farenik is a husband, father of two girls, avid OCR athlete, blogger, product reviewer and contributor to 3-Seconds.com