Siphamandla Mtolo

Morning ladies and gentlemen. What was your top sporting moment of the weekend?

A little more for the marathon nerds: Yomif Kejelcha ran 1:59:41 to become the second man under two hours in a legal race and he was on Sabastian Sawe's shoulder until 41K. Took a bit different of a fueling approach. The Santamadre team, an emerging Spanish company, shared his fueling plan with the targeted amounts at each station. A few things stood out to me, if I'm reading this correctly. Kejelcha planned to take roughly 60ml of fluid at most stations, which is estimated at less than half of Sawe's intake (though it's worth noting runners often toss bottles quickly and don't hit their targets exactly). He skipped 5K entirely and took nothing at 40K. 🗣️Santamadre co-founder Alfonso Beltrá López:  “We took advantage of the pre-race window to reduce digestive load as much as possible. We knew exactly how much fluid the athlete loses and how much energy his body consumes, as we had monitored him 24/7 over the previous three months: body temperature, breathing rate, heart rate and oxygen saturation. We also controlled his caloric load in detail. The strategy was to provide 287.4 g of carbohydrates between the pre-race and in-race fueling, in addition to the 580 g of glycogen we had built up during the two-day carb-loading phase before the race.” I didn't know as much about their products beforehand but the Unusual Fuel (taken by him at 15K, 25K, 35K) is a high-carb drink mix: 100g of carbs and 500mg of sodium per 500ml. Unusual Gel 45 is a 45g carb gel in a 1:1 glucose-to-fructose ratio, available with or without caffeine. He used the caffeinated version pre-race and at 20K.  Then there's Reset Gel (10K, 30K), which is an interesting one. It's billed as a CNS fatigue blocker with 300mg of tart cherry polyphenols. It also has 30g of carbs. It kicks in quick and his two doses overlapped to cover most of the second half.  🗣️ López: “We used RESET Gel at 10K and 20K, a gel designed to help control muscle damage and reset fatigue. It was one of the key parts of our strategy, exactly as we had seen in the specific training sessions.” Finally, the Prototype he sipped for 75 minutes pre-race is a new product in the works. Santamadre says more is coming on that in the months ahead. 🗣️López: “It was a real shame he couldn’t grab the last bottle at 35K. We believe everything could have changed. At 41K, he ran empty; those extra three minutes could have been covered by the 12.4 g of carbohydrates planned for that point.”

Let me lock in for 1hr💪❤️