Sawe’s secret sauce: inside the lab that fuelled historic sub-two hour marathon

Founded in 2015, Maurten’s initial differentiator was the creation of a sports drink that employed a novel hydrogel as a “vehicle” 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‑enhancing 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 “absolute gamechanger”.

Olof Sköld, CEO and co-founder, is planning to relocate of Maurten to a custom-built hangar. ‘It will be like Willy Wonka where we can build our own world inside,’ he says. Photograph: Paul Wennerholm/The Guardian

Sköld says: “When 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.”

Although definitive proof of Maurten’s concepts remains limited – Christensson admits there is “a lot of critique and discussion around the importance of the hydrogel technology” – 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’s method of rapid replenishment, Christensson argued, was vital to anyone seeking to push such boundaries.

So, too, was its next innovation. The performance-enhancing benefits of sodium bicarbonate – better known as baking soda – were first identified almost a century ago. The theory is that by neutralising excess hydrogen ions associated with muscular fatigue, bicarb acts as a “blood buffer” 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.

Maurten’s head of nutrition, Tobias Christensson, explains the science behind the success. Photograph: Paul Wennerholm/The Guardian

Bicarb had been top of Maurten’s ambitions from the company’s formation, but it took until 2023 to release a product that is now ubiquitous at international-level middle- and long-distance running competitions. Costing £15 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.

With explicit instructions not to chew the tablets, the mixture – with a consistency that sits somewhere between half-set jelly and over-thickened custard – 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.

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 – when Maurten launched its bicarb product – 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.

When he woke on the morning of the London Marathon, Maurten’s 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 – precisely one second off the Kenyan’s eventual world record time.

Ben Bloom tests the effectiveness of bicarb as a ‘blood buffer’. Photograph: Paul Wennerholm/The Guardian

“The scientist in me says it was more luck than anything else,” Rowe deflects. Such modesty belies the wealth of data he had collected to inform the prediction.

In the 14 months before the London Marathon, Rowe’s research team embedded itself in Sawe’s Kenyan camp for 32 days across six trips. Tests conducted encompassed everything from energy expenditure to lactate response, and running economy to carbohydrate oxidation.

With a metabolic mask strapped to my face while running on a treadmill in Maurten’s 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 – a rather specific concern that applies to only one of us.

For Sawe, race-day fuelling protocol was practised and fine-tuned over months of gut training. “The theory is that the intestine is like a muscle,” says Rowe. “So, with exposure, it gets better.”

The result was a London Marathon schedule designed and executed with military precision. Having consumed large quantities of Maurten’s 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 – significantly higher than the widely understood carbohydrate fuelling limit before Maurten’s inception.

Sköld describes the London Marathon aftermath as “kind of insane”. 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 “Sawe treatment”.

The team at Maurten anaylse the data. Photograph: Paul Wennerholm/The Guardian

About 1,000 athletes are supported by the company – 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.

It is no wonder moves are afoot to relocate the company from its rented premises to a custom-built hangar elsewhere in Gothenburg. “It will be like Willy Wonka where we can build our own world inside,” says Sköld.

There are, he confirms, other nutrition creations in the pipeline, but he declines to divulge them: “I’m not allowed. But the idea with the company is we don’t release products that don’t change the market.”

Those inside Maurten believe Sawe’s London run is merely a glimpse of what may come as more runners fully recognise their fuelling capabilities. “I think you will see some insanely fast marathons going forward,” says Sköld.

Yet for all the algorithms and hydrogels, Sawe still began the greatest day of his running life with a breakfast of bread and honey. Some essentials do not need improving.