If you've watched a marathon blow up at the front in the last few years, there's a good chance bicarb was part of the story. With new, lower-cost options hitting the market, that edge is no longer reserved for the pros.
Modern sodium bicarbonate supplements are helping change everything we know about endurance sports. The studies are unequivocal now that bicarb should help performance at events 1 hour and below, and real-world practice shows how much it helps longer events.
I was debating whether I should include this next comment, but I'll be honest with you and go for it. If anyone tells you "bicarb doesn't work" for longer endurance, they are telling on themselves: they're not seeing or understanding what's happening at the front end of marathons.
The price is dropping
And now the price of advanced supplements is coming down! Just last week, Carbs Fuel released bicarb capsules that are a fraction of the price of other options. I haven't personally tried them (I'm a Maurten bicarb man myself, like most pros I talk to, and I'm going to ride the horse that brought me here), but it's exciting to see more athletes gaining access to this at a lower price point.
There's also Bicarb 3.0, which involves similar "pellets" as Maurten.
I'm so happy that bicarb is gaining even more popularity. We've known about the benefits of bicarb for high intensity performance for decades, but just taking baking soda causes extreme GI distress. The modern supplements bypass the upper GI system and are absorbed into the bloodstream, acting as an extracellular buffer against acidity.
The immediate result: it hurts way less to push hard and power increases. The reason I'm happy: it can make training way more fun.
But what I'm most interested in is what happens next. My theory is that athletes not only adapt to the enhanced performance on the day, they also adapt over time to the signaling mechanisms aided by bicarb (one study found an increase in MCT1 after bicarb ingestion, a molecule that is used for lactate shuttling across the cell membrane), and may even have enhanced mitochondrial biogenesis.
The big takeaway
Athletes who take bicarb consistently are dominating at the international level and changing what we think is possible, including in events that are longer than 1 hour (whether that's a 2-hour marathon, a 5-hour bike race, or 10+ hour ultramarathons, though the ultra use is not ubiquitous in the same way). If you see a wild performance breakthrough in road running, I'd bet that there's almost always bicarb involved in the race AND in training.
I have only used Maurten so far, which is the gold standard for a reason (I described how I get more uses out of each box behind a paywall here... you'll understand why there's a paywall if you read it). But these newer options are fascinating and I can't wait to see how they are used by athletes.
Find Carbs Fuel bicarb here. Bicarb 3.0 here. The Maurten Bicarb system that changed everything here (if any other product doesn't work for you, try Maurten before ditching the experiment, since I know how well that can work).
