> could absorb and burn 100 calories per hour

burning a hundred calories an hour is trivial. Most people will burn 100 calories per mile when walking or running, and more if moving as fast as these athletes, and many, many humans can do this for far, far longer than 2 hours.

It's the absorbtion that's the challenge. Maurten is not somehow alone in the particular stuff they've developed - ultra runners are generally shifting up into the 90-120 gram/hr range (or beyond!), using a variety of different companies' products. The gut training protocols for this are widely discussed in the world of running for almost any distance above a half marathon.

Where does discussion on gut training occur? All I know is you need a 5:4 ratio of glucose to fructose? Then when you train, you use the gels and the more you do it, the more capable your gut gets at absorbing without distress.

Is that all the science to it?

Yes but the science is actually achieving that and finding the limits. It used to be thought that 60g carbs/hour was the limit, then 100g, now it’s thought to be 120g.

It’s also about the methods of achieving that under stress without spewing it all back up. Ironman athletes would stuff their faces on the bike under the assumption that this volume of carb absorption wasn’t possible while running.

Some of the challenge in research will come from competitors not wanting to publish results to maintain an edge. It is mitigated by the visual of the race by (you can see athletes pounding carbs), as well as the nutrition companies wanting to sell more product. This will cause them to publish some information to convince us amateurs to quadruple our purchase volume ;-)

AFAIK 5:4 is just the lowest ratio they've tested. Personally I use table sugar (1:1) and can sustain rates above 100g/h. Haven't hit the ceiling yet, don't really feel the need to explore where that is yet because exceeding the absorption rate comes with the risk of diarrhoea which is bad at any time but especially when you're in the middle of a training session and who knows where the nearest toilet is.

Gut training is consuming large amounts of carbohydrate (preferably in the same form you intend to use when racing), yes.

Eating the same amount of table sugar or of a commercial gel should have pretty much the same effect on performance.

However, for many people eating so much of a very sweet food becomes very unpleasant.

It is very easy and cheap to make at home a gel by boiling in water corn starch mixed with fructose in a microwave oven, for a few minutes. Swallowing such a gel should feel much less sweet than the same amount of a sugar solution.

As far as I know, the only difference between such a gel made at home and the commercial gels for athletes is that in the latter the starch is pre-digested with some bacterial enzyme, so that the long starch molecules are broken into short molecules of dextrine and maltose.

This processing shortens the time until the absorption in the gut, but I am not sure if this is really an advantage in all cases. A slower absorption will maintain an elevated blood glucose level for a longer time after ingestion, which may be preferable if you feed periodically, because it avoids wide fluctuations in the glucose level, while a faster absorption might be useful for an immediate recovery when the glucose level has been severely depleted by not feeding for a long time.

> burning a hundred calories

GP left out the units but is clearly talking about grams ("absorb ... 100 carbs per hour"), not calories (no one needs training to absorb 25g/hr). Carbs are 4 kcal/g. 100g of carb (400 kcal) an hour isn't replacement level for even casual athletic efforts, but it does mitigate the loss of glycogen in muscle somewhat.

Exogenous carbohydrate doesn't spare muscle glycogen, only liver glycogen.

Wow so he was absorbing 400 calories per hour with this gel, but he was likely burning 3-4x that amount (or even more) while running 13.1 miles per hour!

In a two hour race that’s still 800 bonus calories, that’s something.

The race to tolerate lots of carbs is usually something you think of in 8 hour Ironmans. The good part is you can do most of it on the bike, which is much easier to eat as you go. As far as I know, many elite runners were doing like 50% water, 50% sports drink and consuming way under 100g.

> As far as I know, many elite runners were doing like 50% water, 50% sports drink and consuming way under 100g.

This used to be true, and is still true for many athletes up the marathon distance. Above that, however, the momentum has swung heavily to very high carb intake. Most (though not all) of the world's best ultra runners (we're talking 7:00 min/mile pace through mountainous terrain) are picking this up, with many getting to and beyond 100g/hr of carb consumption.

Your body stores roughly 2000 calories in glycogen. They are burning calories but nowhere near the amount a middle pack would be at this pace.

So ~2800 calories of carbs with some fat being burned.

I've read that even if you absorb it all, there's some question about whether it's useful. This Alex Hutchinson article suggests, among other things, that it may spare your fat stores rather than your muscle glycogen:

> Even if you can absorb 120 grams per hour, it might not make you faster. In Podlogar’s study, cyclists burned more exogenous carbs when they consumed 120 rather than 90 grams per hour, but that didn’t reduce their rate of endogenous carb-burning—that is, they were still depleting the glycogen stores in their muscles just as quickly.

https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/en...

https://archive.ph/Vpk0h

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9560939/

That may still be worthwhile if fat is harder to recruit than exogenous carbs.

What does 'harder to recruit' mean though?

Kejelcha is 6'1" and under 130lb.

What fat stores?

It doesn't take much. If an elite burns 1500-2000 kcal running a marathon, even ignoring glycogen and exogenous carb, that's only ~195-260g of body fat (~7.7 kcal/g). Even at an extremely lean 4% body fat, Kejelcha would have 2360g of body fat available. (He's probably in the slightly higher 5-10% range.)

(And obviously, the majority of those 1500-2000 kcal are coming from stored glycogen rather than fat.)

If we're only talking about the marginal difference between 90 and 120 g/hr of exogenous carb, then that's 60g over two hours or 240 kcal -- equating to 31g of stored body fat. That's nothing.

The last few years, cycling and triathlon have been experimenting with upto 120g carbs intake per hour. Last year, Cameron Wurf ate 200g carbs per hour when he broke the world record for fastest bike split ever in a triathlon (which was broken again a few months later).

a 2025 look at elite triathletes fueling at https://www.triathlete.com/nutrition/race-fueling/ironman-wo... shows that norwegian athletes are ingesting higher amounts of carbs (~180g/hr bike, ~120g/hr run - 2 males, ~150g/hr both run & bike - 1 female) especially for the bike portion.

Is there anything here a people who should be dieting could learn here? I’ve found when running, every 3-4km if I do t have sugars/gatorade my blood sugar gets so low I end up almost confused… running suburban streets is tough because I’ve got to cross the road when I’m midly delirious!

I guess it's the classic case of one not being able to outrun a bad diet.

If fueling during the activity stops you from overeating afterwards and possibly allows you to exercise a bit longer it is worth it, even though it seems counter productive.

> not being able to outrun a bad diet

Dang… I was hoping for some cheat level wisdom :)

How far are you running total, both per run and per week?

Running will absolutely help your health, but on its own it's unlikely to get you thin. It's hard to burn enough to make a big difference without it chewing your body up in other ways - especially if you're overweight and out of condition to begin with, and so a bit more susceptible to injury than skinny runner types.

Thinking of it as a calories in/out equation is counterproductive for most people, if it boosts your cardio health, gets you more active and maybe converts a bit of body fat to leg muscle, that on its own is a win.

Certainly no harm in having a swig of Gatorade every couple of km if it helps you go further, anyhow.

Thanks for your comment!

Unfortunately time hasn’t been on my side for a while now, so my daily running has slipped back to no running in the past year!

I’ll get back at it, but yes… will need to improved diet too

What are the long term effects of a lot of processed carbs on the gut?

One gram of carbs is 4 calories., so more like 400 calories per hour.

It was confusing when the running industry switched from calories to grams of carbs, but that's all anyone talks about now.

Because calories simply do not matter. At high intensities of working out, it's the amount of carbohydrates you can consume that allow more fuel to be burnt.

"In the aerobic exercise domain up to ~100% of maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), CHO is the dominant fuel, as CHO-based oxidative metabolism can be activated quickly, provide all of the fuel at high aerobic power outputs (> 85-90% VO2max) and is a more efficient fuel (kcal/L O2 used) when compared to fat."

https://www.gssiweb.org/sports-science-exchange/article/regu...

Calories do matter (obviously, as energy intake is the entire point) but as you note the specific form that the fuel takes matters. However "carbs" is a catch all that includes plenty of things that (I assume) would be of similarly minimal use in this scenario. The calories need to take a very specific chemical form for this to work.

The wording is certainly confusing here, but yes the calories don’t matter as much as the form. Eating protein and fats simply give you minimal useful calories during the race. Even most carbs won’t be useful if they are more complex.

They're equivalent modulo some multiple. It doesn't matter which one we talk about, as long as we're consistent.

Then why replace one imprecise term with another? Fiber is a carbohydrate. Humans use close to nothing from its energy. (Though it plays another important role in the digesive system.)

Try eating 100g of grass per hour during a marathon and you will see. That's the metabolic edge horses have over humans.

Horses don't eat during races (and aren't evolutionarily disposed to marathons, anyway). No edge there; it takes quite a while for their symbiotic gut flora to downconvert fodder to glucose.

My gut flora won't do that, so they do have an edge. (Not during a marathon, but that wasn't my point anyway.)

It’s also confusing that most nutritional labels say “calories” (Cal) when they really mean kilocalories (kcal). And those are different from regular (‘small’) calories (a measure of energy needed to heat 1g water 1c).

1 food calorie as listed on a food label is enough to heat 1kg of water by 1c

This was the explanation for why the scotch and soda diet doesn't work:

https://www.futilitycloset.com/2008/11/16/the-mensa-diet/

(If the nutritional calories in the drink had been only the same number of thermodynamic calories, the drink would have been energetically negative for the body because of its low temperature.)

Yeah, I assume this dumbification is spearheaded by the Americans.

It's deliberate, because you generally do not want calories from fat or protein during a marathon or other running race.

The leaders were burning a lot more than 100kcal per hour. I think you mean 100g of carbohydrates per hour.

Not burning, eating. They are eating 100g of carb per hour. Burning 1000+ calories.

100 g of carbs is 400 calories, not 100.

Correction: 100g of carbohydrate/hr. That's approximately 400 calories/hr.

Pro cycling has been on the high fueling strategy for a while, with huge results for record times. Its a game changer for endurance sports.

Can someone explain this in more details? Like will you run out of energy, your result will suffer drastically, anything else?

The reason I am asking - I hike a lot, and for shorter hikes (<35km) I don't even bother with food. Just last Saturday I did 28km hike with 550m elevation gain - last meal I had was 5pm on Friday. No breakfast. No problem. I walk at a brisk (for layman) pace, ~7±2 km/h. Am I missing something by not caring about food there, or for my level of "performance" it does not matter anyway? The original question still stands.

Your muscles need energy to work. You have a variety of energy stores in your body, which range from small amounts of quickly available energy (ATP) to large amounts of slowly available energy (fat). Most relevant to this discussion is glycogen, which is is a carbohydrate. You have about 500g in your body, which is about 2000kcal. It is more readily accessible than fat, and 2000kcal is enough for an hour, or maybe two, of high intensity exercise.

These gels and drinks are trying to replenish glycogen stores. The idea is to keep the runner using glycogen for the entire race, as it provides more energy per unit time than fat metabolism.

In your hikes your energy demands probably aren't exceeding the rate that your fat metabolism can provide.

I'm not an expert, so do some research, but it's probably a bit of a) you've trained yourself to burn fat more (a good thing) b) you're not exercising as strenously c) yes, if you ate you'd probably "perform better".

I'd recommend you to do your own research though.

But to add - yes, if you don't eat you will "bonk" on a long bike ride.

I think its important to state that "bonk point" is different based on if your metabolism is adapted for carb vs fat burning.

If always training with high carb loads, you will bonk rather quickly going on a long ride without any compared to if you train fasted or more fat adapted.

It won't matter for your level of performance. A hike isn't a race. I'm assuming you don't care about finishing the hike faster and simply being out in the wilderness at all is the main point, the longer the better as long as you still get home by the time you have something else you need to do there.

Aside from that, this isn't a well-understood topic. Even extremely lean humans have more than enough fat to fuel crossing North American without technically neeeding to eat anything. Fat is less efficient to mobilize than glycogen, and glycogen is less efficient than free glucose already in the bloodstream, so there's some tiny bit of gain there possibly, but frankly, as fast as these guys are going, they're still far enough below lactate threshold that the energy efficiency gain is unlikely to be any real contributor to a faster finishing time. Beyond that, you can't deplete glycogen just from running a marathon, unless you were already depleted at the start of the race. You definitely can and will in longer races, but not a marathon.

Instead, what I'm pretty sure is happening here is you're just hacking the way fatigue works. Your body has more than enough fuel to do insane amounts of work without eating, but bodily systems for doing work are regulated by predictive models. There is no literal fuel gauge in your brain or muscles. They're guessing how much you have left and those guesses are conservative because selective pressures of all animals in the past pretty strongly leaned into leaving something in reserve just in case. If you suddenly find yourself in a struggle to the death, you need to be able to give it your absolute all, and that will require mostly if not entirely glycogen, which means your body's natural regulatory systems will work very hard to keep you from depleting it, so even if you have plenty left, if it's going quickly, you'll get more tired and sore than it was being depleted less quickly. Your autonomic systems don't know you're going to stop at 26.2 miles and eat a giant feast 20 minutes later and the chance of a tiger randomly popping up on the course is effectively 0. All it sees is you're depleting energy stores far more quickly than you can replenish them over the long term and it tries very hard to keep you from doing that.

In a sense, this is all endurance sport really is, training away and hacking away your body's inhibitory mechanisms to get as close as you possibly can to expressing your true physiological limits, but nobody will ever truly get there.

Adidas all over this one https://news.adidas.com/running/two-adidas-athletes-sabastia...

The Adidas Adios Pro Evo 3 - https://news.adidas.com/running/adidas-unveils-its-first-sub...

  adidas introduces the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 – the lightest and fastest Adizero shoe ever, weighing an average 97* grams.

  The race-day shoe represents the culmination of three years of cutting-edge research. It is 30% lighter, delivers 11% greater forefoot energy return, and improves running economy by 1.6% compared to its predecessor - making it a record breaker before it’s even laced up.

  The shoe will launch with a highly limited release, with ambitious runners able to sign up for the chance to get their hands on a pair from April 23. This will be followed by a wider release in the fall marathon season. The Adizero adios Pro Evo 3 will cost $500/€500.

For other marathon racing shoes, Google says:

  The Nike Alphafly 3 is the lightest in the series, weighing approximately 7.0–7.7 oz (198–218g) for a men's size 9, and 6.1 oz (174g) for women's sizes.


  The PUMA Deviate NITRO™ Elite 3 is exceptionally lightweight, typically weighing 194g (6.8 oz) for a men's size 8 (UK)

You can buy them in the UK soon, just £450 and I suspect they'll disintegrate quickly... https://www.adidas.co.uk/adizero-adios-pro-evo-3-shoes/KH767...

Most superfoam shoes actually last longer than older EVA-based foams:

> Improved durability: Supercritical foaming produces a more consistent cell structure in a midsole. This should translate to pressure and weight being more evenly distributed, which should lead to greater durability of the midsole. “We’ve done a lot of testing of what foams look like on a dynamic impactor fresh versus 300 or 500 miles later, and we see less degradation in those materials longer-term,” FitzPatrick says.

> At least in terms of the midsole’s life span, super foams may have done away with the conventional benchmark that running shoes last about 300 miles. “I think it’s a dated standard,” Caprara of Brooks says. “It’s an easy go-to to help simplify. But every foam is different, and it’s not just the foam—it’s how it’s constructed, the shoe’s geometry, the rubber underneath it. There are so many factors. If I were to tell you the Glycerin Max lasts 300 miles, that’s probably less accurate than it is accurate. It’s probably closer to 500.”

https://www.runnersworld.com/gear/a64969945/secret-to-super-...

Much like the road bikes that cost as much as a sedan, unless you are competing on a world stage, these aren’t meant for you.

I’m sure someone will happily sell them to you if you enjoy wasting money.

You don't need to be competing on the world stage to enjoy some of the benefits of Alpha flys or those pumas. 500 for the new Adidas does seem a little silly though.

While the foam may last longer than older EVA foam shoes, the outsoles of the shoes have gotten ridiculously thin these days.

The continental rubber outsole on these Adidas Adios Pro EVO 3 shoes are so thin (less than two sheets of paper, I think), that they don't even appear in side/profile views of the shoes. The outsole doesn't even extend the length of the entire shoe, it stops around the middle of the shoe. So heel strikers aren't welcome and will have loads of fun in wet weather. see https://www.adidas.com/us/adizero-adios-pro-evo-3/KH7678.htm...

In general, these high stack, forward-leaning shoes are meant for going straight ahead - imagine ladies' high heel shoes with an inch and a half of foam on the bottom - any sharp turns will force the runner to slow down or they'll twist their ankles. Looking at the London Marathon course, https://www.londonmarathonevents.co.uk/london-marathon/cours..., there's about twenty ninety-degree or sharper turns.

> unless you are competing on a world stage, these aren’t meant for you.

There’s a lot of people trying to get a 3 hour marathon or some other goal where chasing the marginal gains is worth the cost to them.

What sort of gain would that be for a non-world class runner? I'm unfamiliar with high level running, but I'm curious as in most sports these sort of things provide a small benefit at the top level (seems to be about a ~3% reduction in times over the past decade since the shoe wars began), and that quickly becomes statistical noise outside of the top due to diminishing returns.

But if you really want to reduce your marathon time by 15 minutes, then gaining a few minutes from better shoes, a few minutes from a high altitude training camp/holiday in Flagstaff/Dolomites, and a few minutes from a day at a gait analysis centre, may be worthwhile - or atleast a fun way to spend money on your hobby.

10% improvement on a 5 hour marathon time is more absolute seconds than on a 2.1hr marathon time.

But if you could only achieve it by adding the shoe isn't that a bit hollow?

If you are a 3:02 marathoner in normal shoes then run a 3:00 in a super shoe, you are still a 3:02 marathoner in normal shoes.

If anyone's interested, the shoe being purchasable by the general public is a condition of them being deemed legal for pros, after a crackdown on Supershoes a few years ago.

The other conditions as I recall are there is only allowed to be one carbon plate in them and a maximum stack height of 40mm.

It really is incredible that Nike kicked off this Supershoe arms race ten years ago and spent (presumably) an incredible amount on R&D, marketing and hype to try and complete the mission of being the first shoe to go Sub-2, and Adidas has pipped them at the last minute... twice in one race. Oh to be a fly on the wall at HQ today...

Though I assume they made a lot of that cash back in the interim selling these things to weekend warrior suckers like myself!

I normally consume 90g of carbs per hour when long distance biking, so do a few other riders I know. No GI issues. I use Skratch some other guys like Precision.

Yeah, I just literally use table sugar, which is 1:1 glucose:fructose. Maurten et al using 1:0.8, close enough! And I don't believe the hydrogel thing is any magic, just marketing.

But yeah, this is a thing. There is some gut distress for sure at higher levels of intake. See guy finishing second -- still under 2 hrs! immediately puking, which is fairly common at the high intakes. I've heard of Blumenfeld (the triathlete) taking like 200g/hr or more. Insane. Though he's had some epic GI disasters too, lol.

The hydrogel textures (not maurten but naak, but close enough), for me, allow while racing to swallow a full 40g gel in half a second without feeling the sugary taste a lot, which is nice. Compared to thick syrup-like gels, it’s a way better experience in a marathon.

But I only buy for actual races, rest of the time, I do my own 1:0.8 mix with a bit of thickener, in soft flasks. Much more cost effective.

it is a lot more challenging when running than when biking. The jostling is not your friend.

It's much easier when cycling and there is much more freedom with your breakfast choice and timing. You are stable on the bike. When running there are constant vibrations and up and down movement that can easily upset your stomach/intestines.

> Maurten spent months working with Sawe and other runners getting their gut capacity trained so they could absorb and burn 100 carbs per hour[0][1]

In trail running especially it's not uncommon to exceed the recommendation of 1g/Kg bodyweight/hour, up to 120g of carbs per hour, for those that can take it.

Which is why this feels so artificial and why it’s the 3rd most read article on the front page of the FT. Running as a sport has been very sadly and irremediably gentrified, gone are the days of Zatopek and of Abebe Bikila winning an Olympic marathon barefooted. Fuck Ineos and its owner, too, while I’m at it.

> The Maurten research team was embedded with Sawe’s team in Kenya for 32 days across six trips between last and this April. They were training his gut to absorb that load by mimicking race-day protocol in training. The hydrogel technology they have developed over the past 10 years now allows athletes to absorb 90–120 grams of carbs per hour without GI distress.

That common knowledge, nothing revolutionary here.

There are 2 types of sugar, fructose and glucose, you can max out on glucose around 60g/hour and train you guts to max out also on fucose.

Personally I reached 90g/hour without training, no diarrhea or vomiting.

And you know the best ? White sugar in everyone kitchen is almost perfectly 50% glucose, 50% fructose.

You don't need 'advanced' gel to do that, a bottle of water with 120g of white sugar an hour.

And the shoes, yeah they're light but guess what. Other competitors also have sponsors and excellent shoes, some even run bare feet and yet they don't go faster.

No the real reason why he is able to run so fast is first excellent genetic, that's the common base.

Secondly, excellent training, coaching.

Third, his steroid/peds program is on point and his body is responding well to it.

Typically for endurance runner you want profiles with low natural hematocrit so you can max out on the EPO, but there are also other considerations. For instance, are his tendons responding well to GH and other peptides ?

I'm not the expert on the bio but the gel has the advantage of being consumable while running. Try drinking while running. Even at a slower pace it's hard not to spill. If you want the dosage correct you can't spill.

Well I assumed that during marathon you have places where you stop and drink. Usually there are even volunteers giving out water, you can have someone from your staff giving you a bottle of 1l of water-sugar.

But maybe I'm mistaken and they dont do that for marathon.

Most people do, yes but in this case you don't want to stop on a sub 2 is the point.

> Third, his steroid/peds program is on point and his body is responding well to it.

Do you have any evidence of this?

We never had any for Lance Armstrong until he confessed.

His comment is more of a general commentary that east African countries are notorious for doping.

Like, if we find out the top two finishers here doped very few would be surprised.

That said - it's still an amazing accomplishment.

I’d be surprised, given how outspoken Sawe is about doping. He invited the AIU to test him before Berlin and Adidas also paid.

> Determined to prove he is competing clean, Adidas provided $50,000 (£36,900) to the Athletics Integrity Unit, the sport's anti-doping body, to frequently test Sawe over a 12-month period.

> That began with a reported 25 out-of-competition tests in the lead-up to Berlin in September, continuing at a similar rate as he prepared for London.

> Sawe said on Monday: "It's very important to me because it gets out the doubt in my career of athletics and yesterday's performance.

> "It shows Sabastian Sawe is clean. It shows running clean is good, and we can run clean and we can run faster.

I find con men are the first to protest their innocence, and even suggest well-curated "proofs" of the same.

It's not evidence either way, in the arms-race of high-tech doping.

Armstrong never failed a blood test and he was tested without being warned before hundreds of times a year.

This proves nothing, absolutely nothing at all. It's just a PR move by adidas and actually it seems to be working on you.

I have no evidence of this at all. I did thing it was interesting the demeanor of Sebastian Sawe and second place finisher Yomif Kejelcha, both of whom finished under 2 hours.

If you watch Kelvin Kiptum break the world record at the 2023 Chicago Marathon and Eluid Kipchoge break the world record in the 2022 Berlin Marathon, you see the joy and exasperation of their achievement.

That joy was missing in the winners of the London marathon. It's not evidence, but it's an interesting data point. Another data point: Not only did the first two finishers break two hours, the third place finisher, Jacob Kiplimo, broke the world record.

People do have different emotional response to big achievements.

Still this seemingly detached "matter of a business" look by the winners was intriguing.

They are all high level athletes not Rosie Ruiz, but hopefully this record is clean.

Interesting, I got the exact same feeling when I went to watch tour de France in mont ventoux.

One of the hardest place to climb and that was after hours of cycling, and weeks of racing.

Despite that, pogacar and his main competitor they looked so fresh. Like when you go do a country stroll. The others looked exhausted, some having saliva dipping of their mouth, but these 2 and maybe a few others had absolutely no sign of being tired.

He would later win the race, the tour de France, and many have serious doubt on him.

He regularly explodes climbing record held during EPO area by confirmed cheaters.

Personally that day I got confirmation that something ain't right.

It pains me that running, track, and cycling are "notorious" for doping, but the major sports don't test at any practical level compared to the "dirty" sports.

Any sport, at high levels, definitely involve performance enhancing drugs.

Even ping pong, Adderall can be a tremendous help.

It's just that the other sports don't test as much, they are not worst or better.

That's my point. The major US and European sports don't really test, but the weight of PED blame falls on things like cycling and track.

There are two kinds of athletes that win global track events: - athletes from areas with bad doping enforcement (remote places in the mountains of Kenya, Jamaica) - athletes from countries with tons of surplus biomedical expertise (USA and other western countries)

> You don't need 'advanced' gel to do that, a bottle of water with 120g of white sugar an hour.

Did you carry all of these bottles on a marathon? Did you have to stop to get them out of your bag? How did you find drinking whilst running?

I find gels much more compact and for the amount of time I need to run one - over 4 hours there's a lot of weight I need to carry. I can store a lot of them up front in my running vest and keep going.

> I find gels much more compact and for the amount of time I need to run one - over 4 hours there's a lot of weight I need to carry. I can store a lot of them up front in my running vest and keep going.

I believe he had people from his staff handing him gels and water at designated point in his race. He wouldn't have to carry it all.

And I don't get why my solution of water + sugar is so bad. You're still going to drink water, you can't just eat gels during the whole race.

You might as well add sugar to the water that you are already going to drink anyway, this way you don't need to carry the gel.

You get given water during races, and you don't need a support team for that to happen. There are people handing them out at set locations, so there's no need to carry all of that with you. You often get gels too and its worth training with that brand that they are giving out so that your gut is ready for it, but you can't rely on them because they do sometimes run out.

I've never seen them run out of water though, and it would be a lot to carry for a marathon.

> That common knowledge, nothing revolutionary here.

I've never read about that. So it's not "common knowledge" - except maybe in the running community.

I like your comment for putting some facts into place (how far you can go with common options). But as I never heard of this before, I have no idea how common it actually is and the effects and the science around it, what research does say to this, how and why this is used in other sports - or why not.

I agree with you. I used maurten 160, 320, and the gels years ago.

Now I just throw honey into water on my runs.

It doesn't upset me even though maurten does feel a little better, its worth saving tons of money over buying maurten

Pushing up to and over 100 is the challenge. If i remember right 90 is 60-30 (gluc and fruc) and the upper limit after that GI distress.

You a cyclist or have you been doing that from running?

From homemade concoctions… you can use maltodextrin for pure glucose.

Yeah 100 to 120 is where you start to need to get your gut used to.

I don't remember the exact ratio too, but just saying that it's nothing new and it doesn't explain in itself SAWE performance. Nor the light shoe.

> The hydrogel technology they have developed

At what point is this just a performance enhancing “drug” — what makes something a drug?

Some say that protein or creatin is a drug.

Some say it's testosterone, but we already got natural testosterone in our body. Just like creatin.

Maybe a drug is at the point where you put in your body something that it doesn't produce naturally. Like nandrolone, clenbuterol.

Honestly I thought I had a clear view too but the more I think about it the more I realize that we are a bit hypocrite.

You certainly do not need an advanced gel, but sugar solution is not the only alternative.

You can make easily and cheaply at home a gel by boiling in water a mixture of corn starch with fructose. The best way is to do this for a few minutes in a microwave oven, because it is fast and reproducible.

This has the advantage that it does not feel so sweet as a sugar solution, which becomes unpleasant in too great quantities.

I am not aware of any other difference in the commercial gels, except that those use pre-digested starch, whose long molecules are broken in shorter molecules, for a decreased time until absorption. I doubt that this short absorption time is always an advantage, because it leads to wider fluctuations in the blood glucose level during periodic feeding.

Do we know of any adverse effects on such long term consumption of that amount of simplest carbs? While good source of immediate energy, simple carbs are basically a slow acting poison to various internal organs and over time bring stuff like diabetes.

Its great they don't sit idly around in the body and get transformed into fat but rather they are burned in muscles, but still flooding body again and again with this may have long term negative effects that far outweigh any health gains gained from doing these sports, even at such intensity.

Definitely not a diet one could recommend for regular sporty guys, unless they are uber-competitive freaks who have to win at all costs.

I don’t think there is any elite level sport that doesn’t trade long term health for performance in competitions.

> simple carbs are basically a slow acting poison to various internal organs and over time bring stuff like diabetes.

Do you have any evidence for this? The problem with simple carbs (if you don’t already have insulin issues) is that they’re easy to digest and provide minimal satiety so you end up consuming significant calories.

But as far as I’m aware there is no evidence that they’re worse for you than the rapid calorie addition.

These athletes are eating nutritionally complete diets overall. The simple carb intake is a strategy just for the run itself.

That said, pretty much everything about highest-end athletics is net negative for long-term health. It’s incredibly hard on the body to run a marathon in general, let alone at record breaking pace.

Race day super shoes certainly help a lot but another difference is that super shoes allow them to train a lot more. Running training is limited by tendons. This is the reason even elite runners often train only 9-11 hours a week while many dedicated amateurs can easily spend 20+ hours per week cycling. This is also the main reason runners "double" that is they run 2 times a day. The body absorbs 2x45 minute session much better than one 1x90 minutes session.

Super shoes are changing the game here allowing for more volume for months without injuries. When you look at Sawe's training his volume is insane. His easy/endurance days are 20km in the morning and 10km in the evening. This is some 100-110 minutes of running on "easy" days. His total time on feet must be around 14-15 hours per week - approaching cycling volume territory (especially when you consider that cyclists do significant % of their volume cruising/descending without putting almost any power at all which inflates the time).

Re [0] how do they measure this reliably during a race, especially the C-isotopes in the breath?

From the picture it looks like he is only wearing a watch and there is perhaps a little bulge on his left side.

They collected samples every 5k in the 30k long run before the marathon, see Substrate section in http://athlete.maurten.com/

In terms of getting to higher caloric loading due to gut system restraints. It sounds like running has finally caught on to what professional cycling has been doing over the last couple years. Bodies ability to handle high caloric loading is the rate limiting step.

Not to forget the sodium bicarbonate loading 2h before the start.