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.

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).

When I was young everyone acted like running was all about who could endure misery the longest. I think if I had known about these aspects it would’ve seemed more strategic and interesting (especially with smart phones to help). Alas, these days all my effort is in making sure my run doesn’t kill my knees :\

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

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 ?

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

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.

Note that Sawe funded extra testing drug testing for himself for the 2 months before winning the Berlin marathon. The testing followed Athletics Integrity Unit protocols (so surprise testing etc):

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2026/04/how-sabastian-sawe-conv...

This seems unlikely to be true, although it is repeated in every article I read about carbon plated shoes. The people that study them in a lab environment seem to disagree. See some of the papers here:

https://www.wouterhoogkamer.com/science2

However, I agree wholeheartedly with the overall points in your post!

I wonder where that leaves the barefoot movement. Hype dust?

Why is going harder in the hard stuff and easier in the easy stuff more efficient or faster than vice versa? I imagine arguments either way:

Going harder when it's easy gives you higher ROI. Or maybe going easier when it's hard is just too slow. And maybe that is too simplistic: Maybe it depends on how hard; that is, maybe there is a threshold.

Is that all the science to it?

> 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/

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.

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.

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

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 ;-)

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

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bad-luck-brian

It's easier to draw attention (and therefore sponsorships) if you leave some room to improve on successive attempts. It's riskier to give everything up front and then risk plateauing or regressing in your subsequent attempts.

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.

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.

Do you have any evidence of this?

https://runrepeat.com/adidas-adizero-adios-pro-evo-3

Very few mere mortals could run that fast for even 100m.

In his marathon debut too.

The big improvement then was a carbon plate. Adidas (and others) followed suit. The subsequent improvements since then have been marginal but the margins are thin at that level. In this case the big advancement has been the weight of the shoe.

EDIT: Also it's worth noting these shoes are $500 retail. Adidas will for sure get a boost in sales from this, but there's definitely competition in the $200~$300 marathon running shoe space that won't solely draw everyone to Adidas)

There are age group leaders as well. That's perhaps a hundred people, of the tens of thousands running next to me.

Marathons are about running my own pace. The fact that there exists a world record is a piece of trivia.

Of course innovation in shoes will have a bigger marginal impact (because physics).

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.

Sabastian Sawe 1:59:30

Yomif Kejelcha 1:59:41

Jacob Kiplimo 2:00:28

The previous official record was Kelvin Kiptum's time of 2:00:35 in 2023. Eliud Kipchoge did 1:59:40 in 2019, but that wasn't record-eligible as it was held under controlled conditions. Source: The article.

It does sound like the course and the weather made it more likely to happen. And technical advances in shoe composition.

If I'm going bouldering I absolutely cram my toes into a tiny rock climbing shoe, because it allows me to stand on ledges I couldn't without the extra support from the shoe.

That being said, if barefoot generally feels good to you and you're not chasing the pinacle of performance it's probably a perfectly fine choice for your recreational runs.

The carbon plate revolution is the main driver for drop in times over the last 5+ years

40mm stack height maximum One carbon plate only (some shoes were including a second). Must be on sale to the public for < 4 mths before the race in question

Puma makes a shoe that's non-compliant with the above (two plates, not sure about the stack height), for what it's worth.

Wind drag goes up with v squared, so power required goes up with v cubed.

If you run at 105% speed downhill,that requires almost 16% more power to overcome wind drag. You might be better off running at 100% speed downhill (and "saving" that 16% power), and pushing harder to run as close as you can to 100% speed on the uphill stretches that would otherwise have you running slower than 100%. The power used to increase your potential energy going uphill is "zero sum" because you get it back when you go back downhill -n there no pesky v squared or v cubed non linearity there (assuming the race starts and finishes at the same elevation).

"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...

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

I’m guessing like most things of this nature, you’re likely to have super-responders, responders and non-responders?

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.

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.

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.

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

That said - it's still an amazing accomplishment.

Afterwards I did some quick numbers and realised the average marathon runner was not only going a lot quicker than I was, but they were doing it for a further 41km

https://youtu.be/xkBmYQucyMs

Also bear in mind running a single mile under 4 mins was considered impossible for a long time.

But yeah at this point, “it’s the shoes, stupid” should defo be the main part of the conversation.

The advancements in shoes have made a measurable impact, but there are lots of optimizations being worked on.

It’s totally remarkable.

Essentially the argument given was too much advantage came from the shoes and they didn't want racing to be about shoe technology development.

I think the big story here may be the nutrition science to get these guys to absorb a lot of carbs during the run, more than the shoes.

I do find the record fascinating. If I take the 5k, 10k and half-marathon world records and double them then I can run faster than that. But for the marathon I'm a long way off. There's something uniquely difficult about it because it's not just going for a run, but fuelling and training your gut and pacing. I've only done 2 marathons, but I do find them uniquely difficult so for me its extra special to see how fast a human can do it in.

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.

That works out to roughly a 16.7-second 100m. While certainly not crawling, that would be a fairly average pace for a fairly fit middle- to early-high-schooler with a bit of practice.

Yes that’s insane to maintain for a marathon, but it’s not even remotely out of reach for 100m for most relatively-fit people at some point in their lives.

https://www.athletic.net/team/770/track-and-field-outdoor/20...

* of course one mile is hardly comparable to the marathon that pros are able to sustain such speeds over...

It's also somewhat ironic for a race supposedly modeling a messenger running the distance in an emergency situation.

> The leading men went through halfway in 60 minutes and 29 seconds: fast but not exceptionally so. But it turned out that Sawe was merely warming up.

Between 30 and 35 kilometres, Sawe and Kejelcha ran a stunning 13:54 for 5km to see off Kiplimo. Yet, staggeringly, more was to come as the pair covered kilometres 35 to 40 in 13:42. To put this into context, that time is two seconds faster than the 5km parkrun world record, set by the Irish international Nick Griggs.

It was only after a 24th mile, run in 4:12, that Kejelcha wilted. But still Sawe kept going. Astonishingly, he crossed the line having run the second half in just over 59 minutes.

“Before 41 kilometres, I’m enjoying, I’m relaxed,” said Kejelcha, who had won silver over 10,000m at last year’s world championships.

“My body is all great. At exactly 41 kilometres, my body stopped. I tried to push, but my legs were done.

Sawe, though, powered on to set the fastest official marathon time in history. For good measure, it was also 10 seconds faster than Eliud Kipchoge’s unofficial 26.2 mile best, set in Vienna in 2019.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/apr/26/sabastian-sawe...

There's been lots of research into shoes though, so you might be able to work something out. For instance Jack Daniels (the running coach, not the beverage!) found that adding 100 grams to a running shoe increased aerobic effort by around 1%.

The popularity of running waxes and wanes - and the performance of the median runner varies with popularity.

Back in the 1980s the average half marathon finishing time was 1 hour 40 minutes - whereas today it's a little above 2 hours because there are a lot more people particpating.

Sub-2hr marathon, beat the previous world record before Sunday, on your first try, and you don't win! Bad timing...

Prize money for London Marathon 2026 - https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/38880592/london-marathon-2026...

Looks like first place male gets US$330K. Second place will get US$180K.

Divide by 2 to get the approximate hourly rate. :)

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

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.)

Not so. She broke a record for a female-only-pacer marathon time. The women's world record was much, much faster.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-27335251

Also interestingly, the shoe in this record uses much less carbon than past shoes, both saving weight and allowing even more super foam where much of the energy return comes from. Though there so much variance in shoe design and materials there are only theories on how much comes from the plate vs foam vs stack height vs weight vs other factors.

There were recent tests (in France I think) in schools where 50% or something could not run 1 km (sorry I don't have the details on mobile). These are children who have infinity energy (source: parent).

A typical adult won't make it to 1km (source: going back to sport and dying on a 2.5 km run)

I wouldn't have predicted this out of nowhere, but if you told me a marathon debut went this well and asked me to guess whose it was, I like to think I'd have come up with Kejelcha in my top few picks.

That said, great 5000/10000 athletes don't always have great marathon careers. An example from this race is the world record holder at both those distances, Joshua Cheptegei. He's run several marathons but none spectacular by his standards. He was in this race too but 7 minutes back.

However, because marathon are often mixed gender and the best male runners are significantly faster than the best female runners, it is possible for a woman to be paced from the gun to the tape by a male runner. For this reason, there are separate records for the women's marathon for women's only events.

[0] This is one of the things that made Kipchoge's original sub 2 result not record-eligible.

She broke the thing that the IAAF have gone back and forth on calling "the world record". It's the relevant record for this event - there was no more chance of her beating the man-paced record than of beating the men's record or the Le Mans lap record.

I used to love F1 for the tech that would filter down to my car in ten years time, but that is not a thing anymore.

I for one love the advances in technology in something as supposedly simple as a shoe. And maybe I'll get to use it on a hike in a few years.

If this were a bodybuilding discussion, you would get advice on how to manage DOMS symptoms and how to plan your loading schedule, nobody would say that weightlifting "doesn't work" because a beginner got sore after lifting a 80kg barbell for the first time. But people has been conditioned to think that running is a purely cardio activity, so we don't talk about how the muscles and tendons in the foot need to be loaded up gradually just like your bicep.

Barefoot running is a weightlifting activity. Your calf muscle has to lift your entire bodyweight for the forefoot stride. "No pain no gain" applies. Proper posture and techniques are important. Proper workout schedule and loading plan with rest days are important. Sufficient protein intake are important.

https://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/rankings/list/168546/...

Rough that his Marathon time is also 2nd!

These shoes are practically disposable. They trade longevity for noticeable gains in performance. Even the tier below don’t last very long. This is not tech that is going to filter down to your hiking boots.

Endurance sports are quite accessible and don't require that much time, effort, or talent to get way better than the vast majority of people, it's just consistency.

At my peak, I finished the NYC Marathon in the top 2%. I still finished 45 minutes behind the winner.

It feels like elite athletes aren’t even competing in the same sport.

That gives us 125k high schoolers in the USA who can break 04:30 for 1600m. There are about 18M high school students. So of just the high school population alone, about 0.7% of them can do this.

Assuming there are the 4x as many adults that can do this as there are high school students, that gives us slightly less than 0.2% of the total US population capable of this.

I rest my case.

But the initial tech on an F1 car was not made for 200k miles either.

Even if the full tech stack to make it all work - material science, physical layout and construction - doesn't transfer, maybe some bit of it will.

My point being though, unlike some purists, I like the technology race. It is much better than having a brand war simply on the basis of brand loyalty.

FWIW, that now includes me, as a 62 year old. I can hit 6:30 pace for 400m, but find it almost impossible to get under 10:0x for a mile. And that's even after 6 months of training for a 50 mile trail race.

Just yesterday I saw a learner driving at what seemed 10 mph in a 40 mph road, creating a massive queue.

Considering that you can still do a decent sprint over 400m and have the endurance for ultra marathon distances at lower pace, it sounds a bit odd.