Olympic runners eating baking soda raw? Eckkkk

I use liquid Drano. Then again I have a cast iron stomach.

Attn low IQ Spritzler readers. Drano will kill you if ingested. OK? It's a joke son!

The Household Ingredient That’s Powering Olympic Runners

Baking soda is a known performance-enhancer but causes stomach distress. A company solved that problem—and could be electrifying the 800-meter race.

By Rachel Bachman

Sept. 3, 2024 10:00 am ET

Halfway through the 800-meter final of the Paris Olympics, Marco Arop was in last place. But as the bell rang for the second and final lap, the Canadian began motoring through the field and picking off his competitors.

It was nearly enough for Arop to win the gold—he came in second by just .01 seconds and chopped 1.65 seconds off his personal best. But more surprising was the secret ingredient that Arop credited for helping him light the track on fire late in the race: baking soda.

“That’s something we kind of experimented with, last minute,” Arop said. “I figured if everybody else is using it, and it’s been working wonders…”

For decades, cyclists and middle-distance runners have used sodium bicarbonate as a perfectly legal performance enhancer—the same baking soda you might find in the back of your kitchen cupboard. Many studies have shown that the simple substance helps tamp down the painful physiological effects of intense effort and helps keep athletes going.

When taken directly, however, sodium bicarbonate can also cause gastrointestinal distress, a risk that’s significant enough to make most athletes say, no thanks. That is, until recently.

A company named Maurten based in Gothenburg, Sweden, says it has solved that problem. Its solution is including a sort of buffer in the recipe. Before eating it, athletes mix the sodium bicarbonate into a starchy gel that has the consistency of yogurt. A recent double-blind study showed that Maurten’s product not only slightly boosted the performance of male cyclists, it also prevented the troublesome side effects. Maurten made the product available to the public in February 2023.

Emmanuel Wanyonyi, the 800-meter Olympic champion who pipped Arop to the finish, first tried Maurten’s product last year and used it at the Kenyan Olympic trials and the Paris Games, according to his coach, Claudio Berardelli. (Berardelli’s management company receives free products from Maurten and their athletes provide feedback on them, he said.)

At least half the athletes in the men’s 800-meter Olympic final were using Maurten’s products, according to Herman Reutersward, the company’s chief brand officer. Great Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson, who took gold in the women’s 800, is also backed by Maurten.

Sodium bicarbonate has long been shown to help balance the rising acidity in the body during shorter, maximum-intensity exercise. But it came at a cost.

“Essentially what happens is like when you do these kinds of volcano projects in school, or Mentos in a Coke,” Reutersward said. “That’s basically what you get when you pour baking soda into the stomach acid.”

Athletes in a range of events have tried Maurten’s gel concoction, but its effects appear especially strong in the 800 meters, a race that sits at the grueling intersection of speed and endurance.

The event makes an athlete’s blood and muscles become more acidic, which impairs their function, especially in the race’s final 100 meters, said Steve Magness, a running coach and author of several books on sports performance.

In 2012, Kenya’s David Rudisha, the two-time Olympic champion and “Usain Bolt of the 800,” set the world record of 1:40.91 that was thought to be untouchable, Magness said. But after the Paris Olympic final, a half-dozen men are suddenly at Rudisha’s doorstep.

“I’m as skeptical as anyone about supplements. I generally brush them off,” Magness said. “But this one, I think, is having a significant effect.”

It’s possible that 800-meter runners are benefiting from faster track surfaces, super spikes, or even the placebo effect. But none of those elements, which are at least a few years old, fully explains the staggering recent progression of times in the event.

Wanyonyi and Arop both ran about three seconds faster in the Olympic final than they did in the world championships final just a year earlier.

Bryce Hoppel, who finished fourth in Paris, slashed more than four seconds from his time from a year earlier and set an American record. (Hoppel’s representatives didn’t say whether he used sodium bicarbonate at the Olympics.)

Like caffeine, sodium bicarbonate is widely available and used, and is broadly accepted as safe. Both substances have shown to provide performance benefits to athletes. And most importantly, they’re completely legal under the World Anti-Doping Agency code.