Unpacking nutrition science behind the sub-2 marathon

When Sabastian Kimaru Sawe, running in only his fourth marathon, stopped the clock at 1:59:30 in London last month, all of us, runners and non-runners, were transfixed, floating somewhere between comprehension and wonder.Sawe’s timing appeared to defy reality, science, facts, gravity –– the numbers speaking a vibrant language of human possibility. Sawe had offered himself for out-of-competition dope tests before his big races, testing 25 times before the Berlin (September 2025) marathon, his third of four, and a “similar number” before London.The focus around Sawe’s history-busting performance quickly moved to his shoes, the latest “super shoe”, Adidas’ new Adizero Adios Pro Evo3, which weighs 97gm on average. A sub-100gm shoe for a sub-two-hour marathon is the dream sell.Except, it was not about the shoe. Or rather not just about the shoe, but the man wearing it and what was going on inside him over a run during which he covered 100m every 17 seconds on average, 422 times over the hour fifty-nine thirty.When Sawe was asked what he’d had for breakfast that morning, he said, “Two slices of bread with honey and tea.” But, there was more going on inside a body pushed to its screaming limit, his heart beating at 154 bpm for 1:59:30. The science of “fuelling” runners over long distances, an elite staple, suddenly came into sharper notice. And how a Swedish company called Maurten, inventor of the “hydrogel”, is at the forefront of performance nutrition in endurance sports like running, cycling, ultra-whatevers. So the shoes now go out the window?Joshua Rowe, head of sports tech at Maurten laughs, “It’s a combination of both –– we can’t disregard that shoe technology has played a major role, but then also the revolution within nutrition has also been a major element not just on the race day itself, but also within the training.”Nutrition science and the Maurten hydrogel has found its way into elite distance-running over the last decade, right from the first multi-disciplinary project called the Vodafone Sub-2, set up in 2017 by University of Brighton scientist Yannis Pitsiladis.Since 2016, Rowe said, Maurten has “fuelled every major marathon winner, both men and female, every marathon Olympic winner and world championship winner.” Until London, it had remained drowned out by shoe-company publicity. Then, it became Sawe’s “super fuel”. Or his super drink. Rowe said, “I always say the Kenyans put it in a better way. They call it the disappearing drink.”The science around the hydrogel, Rowe said, has been around for many decades –– as an efficient drug delivery system. “Maurten has been the first to harness that technology within a carbohydrate context and a sporting context.” The hydrogel delivers carbohydrates into the gastro-intestinal (GI) tract with a timely and easy release.It may look like a traditional sports drink, but it acts, “functions and operates” in a very different way. When the drink is ingested, it binds with gastric acid, “creating a three dimensional structure almost like a gel” which becomes a “protective shield”, bypassing the stomach and going into the small intestine at a quicker rate. “This ensures that the carbohydrates are “controlled and delivered through the body more effectively.”The reasons Kenyans call it the disappearing drink is that once in, it’s not a liquid sloshing about in the stomach. It takes another form and does its business.Sawe’s fuel plan during the race, released by Maurten after London, featured downing 160ml of their Drink Mix 320 every 5km, plus a Gel100Caf100 at the 20km mark. Packed into his specially-marked bottles that had been prepared down to the last millilitre the afternoon before the race. Correctly labelled and handed over to race authorities and placed at fuelling stations along the course.This is now a ritual, but earlier, it “was never much of a thing”, said Rowe because nutrition was “almost a bit of an afterthought. Some athletes would do it strategically, but not to say a high standard”. Today, no athlete heading into a marathon “will not have a nutritional plan completely dialled in”.Sawe’s was dialled in to a far greater degree, nutrition and ”fuelling” as much a part of his training leading up to his marathons. Coaches trained his cardiovascular system and muscles; Maruten scientists trained his gut to absorb a specific amount of carbs every 5km.This is because running prioritises the blood flow towards the muscles and the skin, sending the stomach into low-capacity/functioning mode. When ingested with carbohydrates, the stomach struggles to process, metabolise and utilise them. The hydrogel makes it easier, but due to blood flow diversion at marathon intensity, it still remains a challenge to ingest a large amount of carbs. The GI system, while not a muscle, has muscle properties. If you train it, it has the elasticity to be able to improve “processing carbohydrates under stress”.In the months leading to Berlin and London, as Sawe underwent training workouts over 30km that “almost simulate the marathon at high speed”, the biotech gurus in Maurten came up with a working fuel plan over every training session, conducting tests before and after. In Berlin, he aimed to consume 105gm of carbs per hour; by London, it had increased to 115 with a total race goal of 220gm.Maurten has been working with Italian coach Claudio Beradelli’s group of elite runners for the last five years in order to study athletic performance and improve their products to benefit the athletes. It meant collecting “really high, analytical and almost lab grade data in the field”.This was research conducted not on what the sports science journals describe as “highly-trained individuals”, but in fact, on a very specific demographic, the narrowest fragment of a sliver. In Rowe’s words, “from the population standpoint” their subjects were “the 0.001%”.Even in this uber-exclusive group, Sawe came through as the outlier, with extraordinary physiological and psychological capabilities. From his marathon debut in December 2024 in Valencia, where he set the year’s fastest time of 2:02:05, he has won every marathon he raced in. “From Claudio’s perspective, not just does he (Sawe) have the natural ability, he has the kind of personal psychological capabilities to attack something like the sub-two,” added Rowe.The simulation models Maurten ran post the training sessions threw up times of 1:59:40 and 1:59:29, but Rowe said there were no celebrations. “Performance is unbelievably hard to model… it’s all about finding the right athlete in the right environment.” This includes the nature of the course and the weather on the day –– the optimum temperature range is between 10-12°C. They’d expected something in Berlin 2025 due to its flat record-breaker course, but it was a 24-degree day; the upside was that Sawe had handled everything and won.They didn’t expect the sub-two in London, but Rowe said, “I think Sebastian, he almost knew more than what we knew. It’s not very much in the Kenyan culture to really kind of boast, he’s not that kind of an athlete. But, from the stuff he’s capable of doing in training, just his whole approach, there was very much a sense of like he’s capable of doing something very special.”When we spoke, Rowe and the Maurten team were in Kapsabet, Kenya with Beradelli and his athletes, everyone buzzed post London and what the autumn marathons of Berlin, Chicago, and Valencia will hold. Rowe called this a “very exciting time… like a marathon revolution almost” and listed Sawe’s contemporaries as part of a special pack capable of running impressive times: the two London podium finishers Yomif Kejelcha (who also ran a sub-two) and Jacob Kiplimo (with a world-record-busting third place) and two-time Boston marathon winner John Korir.Maurten knows that their runners “need to run quicker because there’s a very high chance that someone will run quicker later in the year anyway”.Rowe said the threshold time for a marathon, offered by mathematical models simulating “the right athlete, with the right kind of genetics and physiology,” has a “potential performance limit” of the marathon as anything between an hour 58 or 57 minutes.Sawe’s time in London has unlocked these conversations and these numbers. Rowe said, “I would not be surprised if we kind of hit the 1:58 number in the next couple of years…”It could be Sawe himself doing so. “I find it hard to see him not running quicker –– it’s not like we’ve hit a threshold yet.”Not Sawe, not humankind.(Views expressed are personal)

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Unpacking nutrition science behind the sub-2 marathon

Nutrition science and the Maurten hydrogel has found its way into elite distance-running over the last decade.

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Unpacking nutrition science behind the sub-2 marathon

Nutrition science and the Maurten hydrogel has found its way into elite distance-running over the last decade.