Need for speed
Records and Isotopes
What an absolutely incredible year for the sport of running. Today Josh Kerr broke the world record in the mile - just a mind blowing achievement. That is over 16 miles per hour. Obviously this post has to be running related then.
Earlier this year Kenyan Sebastian Sawe of Kenya and Yomif Kejelcha of Ethiopia became the first two athletes to break two hours at the London Marathon.
People have been eyeing the two hour barrier for years, so what changed with these two?
Just to get it out of the way, obviously these two guys are freak athletes from a work ethic and genetic perspective. They were also wearing the new Adidas race shoes that weigh 97 grams, less than half half the 218 gram Nike Alphafly 3’s that previous record holder Kelvin Kiptum wore.
But what I found most interesting was the 115 grams of carbs per hour these athletes inhaled during the race. Thats four cans of coke worth of sugar.
They didn’t land on 115 based on vibes, Sawe worked with endurance fuel company Maurten to measure exactly how many exogenous carbs per hour he could absord using Isotope tracing.
Imagine you dye a batch of sugar cubes with a food coloring so faint it's invisible to the naked eye but detectable with a special scanner. You feed someone those dyed sugar cubes, and they go for a run. Their body burns some of that sugar for fuel and breathes out the "exhaust" as CO2. You hold up your scanner to their breath and look for traces of that specific dye in the exhaust. If you see a lot of dyed exhaust, it means the sugar cubes you fed them got used quickly. If you see very little, most of it is still sitting undigested in their stomach.
That’s important because if you take in too many carbs that go undigested, you’re liable to… deal with stomach problems. Think Davis Clarke at the Boston Marathon.
But when done right, it allows runners to sustain these insane paces for a much longer time.
Was it just the high carb thing? Probably not. Did it have something to do with it? without a doubt. Is it hard to not be long humanity when we’re breaking records left and right? You bet your ass it is.
Onwards,
Kieran