Anything that is delayed release is supposed to work similarly, but I don't know of any studies that compare to Maurten directly.
The studies, and the meta dat study, is well before maurten, i.e. the commercial product is directly based on the recommendations in discussion/conclusion points.
You could very easily make your own or even better delivery.
You could buy 1000 empty gelatin capsules for literally pennies and fill them with bicarb, but the problem is the quantity. For a 65kg athlete, the recommended dose is ~15g (0.23g/kg). That's 15 pills or more, but there must be a better solution. £71 for 4 servings is daylight robbery.
Yes, I thought of that, but I think I will try some hard boiled lolly type to deliver a higher dose with slower release. I have forgotten when I worked in a lab, so long ago, but still in the chem/science industry and a bit of a 'home brewer' person too, so willing to give this a shot.
My value/moral view is that we preload carbs (from potatoes/rice/pasta etc) that we "don't normally have in diet", not mine anyway. I don't ever drink coke, except last few k's of a marathon, even added sugar to 'flatten' it and give extra sugar, for that straight hit to blood for a km or 2, I don't go around eating gels (even though) I'd probably only have one in a marathon etc etc. Do we take bicarb? Sure we do, in cake mix, or do relieve acidic stomach etc. So, this may be one of those you can take, though I think the benefits are over rated.
David Roche, who recently set the leadville ultra record, discussed taking a serving the morning of the race. This application is so far from an 800 but interesting in the sense that taking bicarb means you're ingesting a lot(4-5000mg!). Sodium preloading can help maintain hydration during long efforts and/or hot days. The buffering may have helped on steep climbs at 10000+ feet when trying to run for 15 hours. Obviously limiting any time spent above LT1 and certainly LT2 would be beneficial.
Thoughts on this? I wonder if any of the Paris marathoners used it beforehand, or if it will become eventually become more common for longer races.
I hope he is not paying as it would definietly be placebo. It only helps for anaerobic energy pathway, and I think in a marathon it would be minimal, rather spend money on shoes and comfy shorts that don't chafe
No, sodium bicarbonate is not legal merely because "it's not deadly/dangerous/cancer-causing". Lots of banned drugs aren't particularly hazardous. To quote Michele Ferrari (of Lance Armstrong fame), EPO is not dangerous if used correctly: "EPO is not dangerous, it's the abuse that is. It's also dangerous to drink 10 liters of orange juice".
Do we see all those cycling and track and field stars of decades past dropping like flies due to their PED intake? No.
Face it, athlete safety is not a primary reason why oxygen-vector drugs, steroids, etc. are banned.
It's entirely plausible that taking sodium bicarbonate is giving elite 800m runners a 1-2% improvement in times. That's huge! Still haven't heard an explanation of why this is acceptable on an ethical level. I get the practicality defense, and I appreciate that baking soda is cheap and thus doesn't inherently favor the better-funded runners. Even if you buy the over-priced Maurtens, it's still relatively cheap. But the fact remains that it's a chemical - one that you would not normally ingest in the course of your normal life - that you take for a performance boost of possibly 1-2% off your 800 time.
You sound like a dummy with the ethical BS. What’s unethical about any of this? One would not normally ingest it? Well one would normally not do a lot of things if they weren’t training at a high level. One would normally not foam roll if not obsessing over recovery of over worked muscles. Should foam rollers be banned? I mean water is a molecule that’s ingested. Ban water?
Close, but not quite. Lactate is the form that exists in your body, not lactic acid. During high intensity exercise, the rate at which you're breaking down glucose/glycogen (everyone remember high school biology? this is the glycolysis pathway) exceeds the rate at which you can take the end product (pyruvate) and transport it into the mitochondria to produce energy aerobically. So we have a side-reaction that turns this pyruvate into lactate and a H+, not lactic acid. This is because at physiological pH (i.e., your body's natural state), lactic acid dissociates to lactate (which can be used as a fuel) and H+, which can be exported out of the muscle. It is the build up of H+ and other metabolites like inorganic phosphate (Pi) that are the cause of fatigue, not lactate. Sodium bicarb is aimed at targeting the rise in H+ in the blood (a rise in H+ = a drop in pH as it makes things more acidic). This is in contrast to supplements like beta alanine which tries to limit the build up of H+ in the muscle itself.
As others have noted, sodium bicarb has been around for decades, beyond simply mixing baking soda in water and trying to drink it. There are pill forms as well as enteric coated capsules that are protected in the stomach to limit GI issues. There is nothing more special about Maurten versus those pills other than marketing (and a heavily inflated price). And there have been questions raised previously about how effective their hydrogel actually is anyways. My guess is you'd get similar effects with the other forms of bicarb, at much lower price point.
Are you implying that taking bicarb while taking beta alanine will negate its effects due to the lower build up of H+ in muscles?
This (small) study found that taking bicarb after 28 days of beta alanine supplementation was about the same or slightly better than bicarb alone.
In trained cyclists, β-alanine supplementation did not significantly improve 4-min cycling performance; however, there may be a small meaningful improvement in performance. Acute NaHCO3 supplementation significantly improved...
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