How London Marathon winner and record-breaker Sabastian Sawe was fuelled off Adidas and Maurten energy gels
Thomas John Hicks stood at the starting line of the 1904 St Louis Olympic marathon, chest proud and left foot forward. Wearing black running shoes, black shorts and a Cambridgeport Gymnasium jersey, the worker from Massachusetts was the favorite to win the event in his third modern Olympic Games.
He had finished second in the 1904 Boston marathon, but more remarkable than any of the earlier athletic achievements was the innovative concoction his coaches created to combat dehydration in the Olympic race, providing only one refreshment stand along the 40km course.
Hicks collapsed in the middle of the road and was instructed to drink a mixture of strychnine (rat poison) and egg whites. He ran another 15 kilometers before drinking a glass of cognac for his second dose of the potion. He won, although Hicks, who was inconsistent and received immediate medical treatment, had to be carried to the finish line (which was not yet a disqualifying move). Hicks holds the record for the slowest marathon won at an Olympic Games in 122 years: three hours, 28 minutes and 56 seconds over a slightly shorter course than today.
At the London Marathon on Sunday, April 26, 31-year-old Kenyan Sabastian Sawe became the first person to legally run a marathon in under two hours. His time of 1:59:30 was a long way from Hicks’ record, and his fueling methods were even more advanced.
After London, attention focused on a different technological advance in marathon running: sneakers and the years-long competition between Nike and Adidas to create shoes that would enable an athlete to run a marathon in under two hours. Adidas placed first and finished twice. Just after crossing the finish line wearing Sawe shoes, Yomif Kejelcha completed his first marathon in another pair from the company, just 19 seconds under the two-hour mark.
But neither Nike nor Adidas’ scientists were the first sports scientists to attack the two-hour limit. And the common thread between each of the super athletes who put on their shoes to reach this incredible milestone was a Swedish energy drink company called Maurten.
Indeed, after Sawe broke the record, his coach Claudio Berardelli said: “There is no doubt that we have entered a new era in marathon running thanks to the shoe, but I would also say due to the convenient refueling. That is why we are very happy for Adidas. We are also very pleased for Maurten.”
The birth of Maurten and the project that took less than two hours
A year before Nike launched a record-breaking shoemaking campaign in 2015, Australian-born researcher and sports scientist Yannis Pitsiladis launched his own effort to help athletes break the two-hour marathon barrier. Pitsiladis’ research focused on understanding how genetics, physiology, biomechanics, education, technology and nutrition can contribute to reaching this milestone. He has openly expressed his belief that running a marathon in under two hours depends on athletes being able to consume more carbohydrates in one hour than was previously believed possible.
A number of studies (though not all experts agree) show that endurance athletes have more energy and perform better when they have a combination of both stored carbohydrate (glycogen) and higher carbohydrate intake during an event. But for a long time, athletes, researchers, and dietitians believed that it was not possible to consume more than 60 grams of carbohydrates per hour without succumbing to gastrointestinal issues (like vomiting) or without the body being unable to truly absorb additional carbohydrates.
“We used to think that around 60 grams per hour was the limit of what could be absorbed,” said marathon runner and sports dietitian Louise Burke. “But this was based on the fact that most carbohydrate sources we use have a glucose base, and the glucose molecule binds to a specific transporter to transport it through the intestinal wall. And this transporter reaches a maximum of 60 grams per hour.”
“But in the early 2000s, there were studies showing that there were other carbohydrates, including fructose. [which make use of] different carrier proteins. If you have a drink that has a little bit of both, then you can drink it. [almost] double the amount of absorption.
Pitsiladis hypothesized that to run a marathon in under two hours, athletes would need between 90 and 100 grams of carbohydrates per hour. In early 2016, Maurten’s founders contacted Pitsiladis, believing that his energy drinks and gels would allow athletes to do just that. They started working together.
Maurten’s co-founder, Mårten Fryknäs, is an associate professor of cancer pharmacology and an Ironman triathlete (this includes a 3.8-kilometer swim, a 180-kilometer bike ride, and a full 42-kilometer marathon on the last leg of each race).
He came up with the concepts behind his company’s products after experiencing gastrointestinal issues while running. A visit to the dentist, who told him that sports drinks were damaging his tooth enamel, also played a role.
Sports drinks, which became popular in the 1980s, have long been targeted at endurance athletes for hydration (fluid and electrolytes) and fuel (carbohydrates). As a complement to beverages, energy gels were invented as a way to provide athletes with a higher concentration of carbohydrates in a smaller, more portable dose. These sticky liquids, usually sold in small sachets, can make athletes sick when consumed in too much, often causing vomiting or diarrhea, which Fryknäs also suffered from.
Thanks to his cancer research, Fryknäs was already familiar with how hydrogels (polymers that absorb and retain large amounts of water) are used in targeted drug destruction to minimize the side effects of certain drugs. He suggested that using the same technology in energy gels would allow athletes to absorb greater amounts of carbohydrates during a race without suffering gastrointestinal side effects.
Professor Greg Qiao, head of the Polymer Science Group at the University of Melbourne, told this imprint that the now-patented Maurten hydrogel gels use a biopolymer made from extracts from seaweed and berries to control carbohydrate release in the small intestine.
“When they go into your stomach… [they] “Release these carbohydrates slowly so they can provide energy that the body can absorb and use,” he says.
London Marathon
Pitsiladis eventually moved from unlocking scientific keys to elite marathon performance, but Maurten did not. Nike began feeding its athletes a sub-two-hour trial in 2017. When two-time Olympic gold medalist Eliud Kipchoge excelled in 2019 (though his time of 1:59:40.2 didn’t count because it was done under unofficial race conditions), Maurten ran the course drinking water from unlabeled bottles containing the carbohydrate drink and the company’s gels.
When adidas athletes Sawe and Kejelcha did so legally on April 26, they both again used a combination of Maurten drinks and gels.
Sawe’s personalized carbohydrate regimen was developed over a month with Maurten’s researchers in Kenya. To increase muscle carbohydrate stores, he would drink two carbohydrate drink mixes two days after the race, a gel five minutes before the race, and another drink mix every five kilometers.
Another important part of Sawe’s pre-race routine was using Maurten’s sodium bicarbonate drink three hours before the race started. Bicarbonate of soda (commonly known as baking soda) helps relieve acid buildup and fatigue but can also make athletes sick.
Maurten’s patent, which uses a gut-friendly polymer to contain baking soda, may have contributed to Sawe’s ability to run the second half of the race faster than the first.
“It takes about two hours to reach its peak in the bloodstream,” says Burke. “So what he does is he sets it up so that he’s there and ready to take advantage of the event for probably an hour whenever he needs it.”
But Burke says the evidence proving the effectiveness of consuming sodium bicarbonate is questionable because of how difficult it is to mimic a racing scenario (including the adrenaline rush from competitors and fans) in a laboratory setting.
In fact, Jessica Rothwell, high-performance nutrition lead for the Australian Athletics Championships (whose athletes use energy gels), said research on carbohydrate hydrogels in endurance sports is still in its infancy.
“We need testing of female athletes and more robust or larger study numbers to truly be sure that one hydrogel improves performance more than others.” [product]Rothwell says.
Weekend runners eager to emulate Sawe’s sprint can purchase Maurten products, but they won’t be able to take advantage of the month-long personalized program he has. Burke and Rothwell suggest that anyone using gel should do so only before any race and after trying other fuel sources, including the simplest ones. “I don’t have a problem with someone who is a recreational runner running a marathon saying, ‘okay, I’ll buy Maurtens,'” Burke says. “Technically though, I could just drink liquor and have some sugar because that might be enough to feed me.”
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