London Marathon<\/a> time of 1hr 59min 30sec was the latest.<\/p>\nIn London alone, seven of the top eight men had an official relationship with the Swedish company, alongside five of the top six women. There is a distinct possibility the few exceptions did on an unofficial basis as well. At the very top of the sport, Maurten has become inescapable.<\/p>\n
In the weeks before Christmas, the company\u2019s head of nutrition, Tobias Christensson, welcomed Sawe\u2019s coach, Claudio Berardelli, to its Gothenburg headquarters. Maurten had worked with Sawe\u2019s team for some time, but it was a chance to explain the detail behind its products \u2013 most of which Berardelli was familiar with \u2013 and present some of its latest findings.<\/p>\nSabastian Sawe crosses the line in 1hr 59m 30s to smash the men\u2019s marathons record.<\/span> Photograph: Tom Jenkins\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nFounded in 2015, Maurten\u2019s initial differentiator was the creation of a sports drink that employed a novel hydrogel as a \u201cvehicle\u201d to transport carbohydrates. It was originally intended to improve dental health by reducing the sugar and acidity content of energy drinks, but early experiments suggested the concept had far greater performance\u2011enhancing benefits. By encapsulating carbohydrates in the hydrogel, it would in effect bypass the stomach and be absorbed in the intestine. That allowed considerably greater quantities of carbohydrates to be taken onboard during exercise without the gastrointestinal problems expected with most sports drinks. It was, says Christensson, an \u201cabsolute gamechanger\u201d.<\/p>\nOlof Sk\u00f6ld, CEO and co-founder, is planning to relocate of Maurten to a custom-built hangar. \u2018It will be like Willy Wonka where we can build our own world inside,\u2019 he says.<\/span> Photograph: Paul Wennerholm\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nSk\u00f6ld says: \u201cWhen we first started testing it with elite runners in Kenya and Ethiopia, they said it was magical because it disappears. If you are a 50kg runner, you feel every bit of water inside. They believed it was magical because they were drinking something and it felt like it was disappearing inside them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although definitive proof of Maurten\u2019s concepts remains limited \u2013 Christensson admits there is \u201ca lot of critique and discussion around the importance of the hydrogel technology\u201d \u2013 Berardelli was shown a number of recent studies. One found that an athlete attempting a marathon at two-hour pace would be entirely depleted of glycogen energy stores within 85 minutes if they took on no additional carbohydrates. Maurten\u2019s method of rapid replenishment, Christensson argued, was vital to anyone seeking to push such boundaries.<\/p>\n
So, too, was its next innovation. The performance-enhancing benefits of sodium bicarbonate \u2013 better known as baking soda \u2013 were first identified almost a century ago. The theory is that by neutralising excess hydrogen ions associated with muscular fatigue, bicarb acts as a \u201cblood buffer\u201d to counteract the increase in acidity during intense exercise. While considered to be illegal doping in most horse sports, it is perfectly legal for sportspeople to consume. But the reality of potentially severe, and highly common, gastro issues meant few had historically tried.<\/p>\nMaurten\u2019s head of nutrition, Tobias Christensson, explains the science behind the success.<\/span> Photograph: Paul Wennerholm\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBicarb had been top of Maurten\u2019s ambitions from the company\u2019s formation, but it took until 2023 to release a product that is now ubiquitous at international-level middle- and long-distance running competitions. Costing \u00a315 per serving, its bicarb system employs the same concept as the earlier drink mix, using a pot of gloopy hydrogel to transport many dozen bicarbonate mini-tablets past the stomach into the intestine.<\/p>\n
With explicit instructions not to chew the tablets, the mixture \u2013 with a consistency that sits somewhere between half-set jelly and over-thickened custard \u2013 is consumed with a spoon about two hours before exercise. After taking it upon my arrival in Gothenburg, finger-prick blood testing over the course of the afternoon showed elevated pH levels that its proponents believe might prove favourable for high-intensity performance.<\/p>\n
There is, say those at the helm, a growing body of anecdotal evidence across a range of distances. For example, 36 men ran a mile in less than 3min 49sec from 2023 \u2013 when Maurten launched its bicarb product \u2013 to 2025. Despite the earlier advent of super spikes and track surface upgrades, only nine men broke the same mark over the previous 12 years.<\/p>\n
When he woke on the morning of the London Marathon, Maurten\u2019s head of sports tech, Josh Rowe, punched the latest weather forecast into a prediction model he had devised and looked at the computer screen. According to his calculations, Sawe would complete the 26.2-mile course in 1:59.29 \u2013 precisely one second off the Kenyan\u2019s eventual world record time.<\/p>\nBen Bloom tests the effectiveness of bicarb as a \u2018blood buffer\u2019.<\/span> Photograph: Paul Wennerholm\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u201cThe scientist in me says it was more luck than anything else,\u201d Rowe deflects. Such modesty belies the wealth of data he had collected to inform the prediction.<\/p>\n
In the 14 months before the London Marathon, Rowe\u2019s research team embedded itself in Sawe\u2019s Kenyan camp for 32 days across six trips. Tests conducted encompassed everything from energy expenditure to lactate response, and running economy to carbohydrate oxidation.<\/p>\n
With a metabolic mask strapped to my face while running on a treadmill in Maurten\u2019s training laboratory, I was granted a peek into the number-gathering process, albeit a mid-life amateur version rather than a superhuman in their prime. Among other things, the results revealed precisely how many carbohydrates I, and Sawe, should consume during an attempted two-hour marathon and when exactly to take them \u2013 a rather specific concern that applies to only one of us.<\/p>\n
For Sawe, race-day fuelling protocol was practised and fine-tuned over months of gut training. \u201cThe theory is that the intestine is like a muscle,\u201d says Rowe. \u201cSo, with exposure, it gets better.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result was a London Marathon schedule designed and executed with military precision. Having consumed large quantities of Maurten\u2019s high-carb drink mix in the two days before the race, Sawe started the morning with a bowl of the bicarb sludge, then had a gel on the start line. He gulped exactly 160ml of drink mix every 5km throughout the race, plus a caffeine gel at halfway. It all amounted to an average carbohydrate intake of 115g per hour \u2013 significantly higher than the widely understood carbohydrate fuelling limit before Maurten\u2019s inception.<\/p>\n
Sk\u00f6ld describes the London Marathon aftermath as \u201ckind of insane\u201d. The company estimates it already has an official relationship with about 70% of major marathon elite runners, yet it has nonetheless been inundated in recent weeks by athletes and coaches seeking the \u201cSawe treatment\u201d.<\/p>\nThe team at Maurten anaylse the data. <\/span> Photograph: Paul Wennerholm\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAbout 1,000 athletes are supported by the company \u2013 predominantly runners, but also participants in the endurance sports of cycling and triathlon. The Manchester-based M11 Track Club, containing the Olympic 800m champion, Hodgkinson, and the world indoor 1500m champion, Georgia Hunter-Bell, even has a Maurten employee permanently embedded within the group.<\/p>\n
It is no wonder moves are afoot to relocate the company from its rented premises to a custom-built hangar elsewhere in Gothenburg. \u201cIt will be like Willy Wonka where we can build our own world inside,\u201d says Sk\u00f6ld.<\/p>\n
There are, he confirms, other nutrition creations in the pipeline, but he declines to divulge them: \u201cI\u2019m not allowed. But the idea with the company is we don\u2019t release products that don\u2019t change the market.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those inside Maurten believe Sawe\u2019s London run is merely a glimpse of what may come as more runners fully recognise their fuelling capabilities. \u201cI think you will see some insanely fast marathons going forward,\u201d says Sk\u00f6ld.<\/p>\n
Yet for all the algorithms and hydrogels, Sawe still began the greatest day of his running life with a breakfast of bread and honey<\/a>. Some essentials do not need improving.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nSource link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inside an unremarkable Gothenburg office building rented from the local university are a series of conference spaces named after the modern greats of distance running. There is the Eliud Kipchoge room, the Keely Hodgkinson room and, the latest addition, the Sabastian Sawe room, in homage to the man who recently redefined the limits of human […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":243646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6802],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-243645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-athetics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}