Did you know there's a pill that supposedly over half the distance medallists used in 2023?

Viagra?

I gotta admit up front I pushed back a decent amount on this article from Jonathan.

Look when I was competing, I was looking for some sort of edge myself - I even wrote USATF to ask if I could take some produce called pro-HGH (they said I could) - but now removed from it all it kind of upsets me.

Dathan Ritzenhein left the NOP as he had a falling out with Salazar over L-Carnitine and now the OAC seems to be the leaders of this Maurten Bicarb System?

Jon was mesmerized that 'everyone' was taking this.

My response was

1) Many of the teams are being paid to take it.

2) View what the PR guy from Maurten says very skeptically

3) Isn't it weird if the stuff is so, so amazing that the best cyclist on the team sponsored by them (two-time TDF winner Jonas Vingegaard) and the best runner (Yared Nuguse) do not take it. Doesn't that sort of disprove the importance of it? Isn't it weird that Sage Hurta Klecker ran her PR the one time she didn't take it? That Faith Kipyegon ran her WRs while not taking it? That Grijalva PRd while not taking it?

Guys and gals, call me old school, go train a little harder or smarter, stop looking for short-cuts.

I'll take things that never happened for $500 Alex.

Can someone copy and past the article here.

I don't have access to the full article but I'd bet that this is some sort of baking soda, hence it called "bicarb." People have been taking this for quite a while. Maybe they figured out how to package it to reduce stomach issues, because it's known for making you puke/diarrhea. I mean, imagine taking a scoop of baking soda lol. It does act as some sort of lactate buffer or something, and I believe it's been pretty well proven, but I'm not a scientist, so feel free to fact check me. Basically, it's an anaerobic booster. Maybe somewhat similar in action to beta alanine?

Yes, it's sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) in the article

Well said rojo. Yes there are no short cuts, but lots of snake oil salesmen.

Rojo absolutely pushed back on this article but I still think he's kind of missing the point of why I wrote about it.

The idea for the article was not: This is a miracle supplement and everyone needs to take it! It was: Wow, a lot of top athletes are using a new supplement -- something that many sports scientists have long believed could boost athletic performance but that no one has ever been able to find a way to deliver without GI issues. I wonder if it works?

Rojo's criticisms -- that some teams are being paid to take it, that athletes like Vingegaard and Nuguse don't take it, and that plenty of users have run faster without taking it -- were all important and that's why I included it in the article.

When I'm looking for a story to pursue, it's usually something I myself have questions about. This summer, I heard a lot of rumblings about sodium bicarbonate -- way more than in any previous year covering the sport. Naturally I was curious and the whole point of the article was to find out more about it -- not to convince people either way that they absolutely should or shouldn't be taking it.

This seems to be one of those "Hey did you know the US landed on the moon?" sort of things... or did you know there's this liquid that 100% of Olympic athletes drink that helps performance? It's called water. Then there are carb/electrolyte drinks. Interestingly enough, Haile G learned that the hard way in one of his earlier marathons drinking only water to a 2:06:35 (which naively tells me that he ran less than a minute slower than the then WR, hopefully clean).

I mean the effects of NaHCO3 on exercise performance and endurance have been known for at least half a century.

Interesting. I remember when I was very young (1960's/70's) people talking about how so and so took baking soda every day because it was supposed to be healthy. I never tried it.

Dihydrogen monoxide is the next big thing and WADA hasn't banned it...yet.

Thanks for the clarification. The "slow release" is key per the site: "So minuscule, it’s massive. The bicarbonate component contains groundbreaking mini bicarb tablets designed to offer far greater control. They allow for a slower release of bicarbonate in the intestine — which can both help reduce stomach issues and lengthen the duration of the bicarb effect."

There isn't really any question that the stuff "works" in that it helps you to buffer hydrogen ions. Whether it improves your performance is going to depend on whether acidosis was your limiting factor. The old school model posits that "anaerobic training" is just about developing your tolerance for acidosis and that if you can just tolerate a bit more, you can tap more anaerobic energy. In reality, many athletes--particularly highly trained athletes with monster aerobic systems--actually struggle to produce enough anaerobic energy to really make acidosis an issue.

The most natural home for this product is in the 800, particularly with fast-twitch dominant athletes who tend to rely heavily on anaerobic energy. There are also hypotheses about how it could reduce perceived exertion, even at distances where acidosis is a non-issue, and that may make it easier for an athlete to dig deeper in the later stage of a race, but that's very untested.

As for whether it's right for athletes to be doing this, I don't really understand the objection. Training practices evolve. Athletes 50 years ago didn't have protein shakes after every workout. Athletes 20 years ago thought that ice baths would improve recovery from hard workouts (instead of hindering adaptation). This is how the sport gets better. Athletes have a responsibility to follow actual, objective rules. They don't have to follow some weirdo's aesthetic judgment about what the sport should be like.

I can attest to the efficacy of this wonder molecule. It actually works.

Acidosis is a by-product of glycogen depletion in the muscles. Which for every race distance, but particularly the 400m and 800m runner happens rapidly and in sequence as they use the most powerful muscles first and gradually shift to more aerobic fibers.

I believe the best way to condition oneself to avoid this being too much of an issue is to avoid too much of it it in training. So no killer workouts to failure, just hard workouts without excessive fatigue.

Ingesting sodium bicarbonate is not going to delay glycogen depletion.

What???

I think you both had your hearts in the right place. It's a really interesting article, but I wouldn't say I come across convinced that the stuff has much of a "real" effect to me. Seems more like a placebo effect. Certainly if your body has difficulty processing it, you should go without. Nearly every athlete mentioned in the piece has outstanding performances without it. So you can do the old thought experiment of "Would Faith Kipyegon run a second faster in her World Records taking bicarbonate?" No, probably not. This is different than the clearer cases of performance-enhancing things like superspikes.

There is still some of 1800s ideas about what is ok to do to improve performance. Running 10 miles? Ok. Injection test? Not ok. What about manipulating diet, sleep and exercise to get the same hormone change?

you get into a lot of gray zone areas in a hurry. See all the thyroid prescriptions and Russian athletes taking not yet banned drugs…

I know very little about this, but my sister drinks magnesium citrate in the evenings for it's calming effects and she did a bit of research and found that it, apparently, has similar qualities to this bicarb. I do not have time to research...

Also, she said your stomach quickly adjusts to the impact so the cramping/gas and so forth dissipates after a half-week or so of use.