When Sebastian Kimaru Sawé, running in his fourth marathon in London last month, stopped the clock at 1:59:30, we were all, runners and non-runners, confused, floating somewhere between understanding and surprise.
Sauvé’s time seemed to defy reality, science, facts, gravity – numbers that speak the living language of human possibility. Savay had submitted himself for out-of-competition dope testing before his big race, having been tested 25 times before the Berlin (September 2025) marathon, his third of four, and “the same number” before London.
The focus of Sava’s history-exploding performance quickly turned to his shoe, the latest “super shoe”, Adidas’s new adiZero Adios Pro Evo 3, which weighs an average of 97 grams. The dream is to sell a shoe that weighs less than 100 grams for a sub-two hour marathon.
Except it wasn’t about the shoes. Or rather, not just about the shoe, but about the man wearing it and what was going on inside him during the race, during which he covered an average of 100 meters every 17 seconds, 422 times in sixty-nine hours.
When Sava was asked what he ate for breakfast that morning, he said, “Two slices of bread with honey and tea.” But, there was a lot more going on inside her body that pushed her to the point of screaming, with her heart beating at 154 bpm for 1:59:30. The science of “fueling” long distance runners, a typical staple, suddenly came into sharp focus. And how a Swedish company called Morten, the inventors of “hydrogel,” is at the forefront of performance nutrition in endurance sports like running, cycling, ultra-whatever. So the shoes go out the window now?
“It’s a combination of both – we can’t ignore that shoe technology has played a major role, but then the revolution within nutrition has also been a major element not only on race day, but within training as well,” laughs Joshua Rowe, head of sports tech at Morten.
Nutrition science and Morten hydrogels have found their way into elite distance running over the past decade, with the first being a multidisciplinary project called Vodafone Sub-2, which was founded in 2017 by University of Brighton scientist Yannis Pitsiladis.
Since 2016, Rowe said, Morten has “energized every major marathon winner, both male and female, every marathon Olympic winner and world championship winner.” By London he was immersed in shoe-company publicity. Then, it became Saave’s “Super Fuel”. Or his super drink. Rowe said, “I always say Kenyans do it better. They call it the disappearing drink.”
The science surrounding hydrogels as an efficient drug delivery system has existed for several decades, Rowe said. “Morten has been the first to use that technology in a carbohydrate context and a sports context.” The hydrogel delivers carbohydrates to the gastro-intestinal (GI) tract with timely and easy release.
It may look like a traditional sports drink, but it works, “functions and operates” very differently. When the drink is consumed, it combines with gastric acid, “forming a three-dimensional structure almost like a gel” which becomes a “protective shield”, bypassing the stomach and moving into the small intestine at high speed. This “ensures that carbohydrates are controlled and distributed more effectively through the body.”
Kenyans call it the disappearing drink because once it is consumed, it no longer dissolves in the stomach. It assumes another form and does its business.
Sava’s fuel plan during the race, which was released by Morten after London, included downing 160 ml of his Drink Mix 320 every 5 km, as well as a gel100caf100 at the 20 km mark. It was packed in specially marked bottles that were prepared down to the last milliliter by noon the day before the race. Correctly labeled and handed over to race officials and placed at fuel stations throughout the course.
It’s a ritual now, but before, it was “never a big deal”, Rowe said, because nutrition was “almost an afterthought. Some athletes did it strategically, but not as high a standard”. Today, no athlete going into a marathon “will have a thorough nutritional plan”.
Savay was heavily involved in nutrition and “fueling” as a part of his marathon training. Trainers trained his cardiovascular system and muscles; Maruten scientists trained his intestine to absorb a specific amount of carbohydrates every 5 km.
This is because running prioritizes blood flow to the muscles and skin, causing the stomach to go into a lower capacity/working mode. When carbohydrates are consumed, the stomach struggles to process, metabolize, and use them. Hydrogel makes this easier, but due to the distention of blood flow at marathon intensity, ingesting large amounts of carbs still remains a challenge. The GI system, although not a muscle, has the properties of a muscle. If you train it, it has the elasticity to be able to improve “carbohydrate processing under stress”.
In the months leading up to Berlin and London, when Sauvé performed training workouts over 30 km that “almost simulate a marathon at high speed”, the biotech gurus at Mortain came up with a working fuel plan for each training session, with tests conducted before and after. In Berlin, he aimed to consume 105 grams of carbs per hour; By London, this had increased to 115 with a total race target of 220 grams.
Morten has been working with Italian coach Claudio Berardelli’s group of elite runners for the past five years to study athletic performance and improve his products to benefit athletes. This meant “collecting really high, analytical and almost laboratory grade data in the field”.
This research was not conducted on what sports science magazines describe as “highly trained individuals”, but was, in fact, conducted on a very specific demographic, the narrowest slice of a spectrum. In Rowe’s words, his subjects were “the 0.001% from a population perspective”.
Even in this ultra-exclusive group, Savay stood out as a standout, with extraordinary physical and psychological abilities. Since his marathon debut in Valencia in December 2024, where he set the fastest time of the year, 2:02:05, he has won every marathon he has run. Rowe said, “From Claudio’s perspective, not only does he (Save) have the natural ability, but he also has the individual psychological ability to attack something like a sub-two.”
The simulation model Morten clocked was 1:59:40 and 1:59:29 after the training session, but Rowe said there was no celebration. “It’s incredibly difficult to model performance…it’s all about finding the right athlete in the right environment.” This includes the nature of the course and the weather on that day – the optimum temperature range is between 10-12°C. They had some hope in 2025 because of Berlin’s record-breaking course, but it was a 24-degree day; The good thing was that Saave took control of everything and won.
He was not expected to finish sub-two in London, but Rowe said, “I think Sebastian, he almost knew more than we knew. It’s not too much in Kenyan culture to really boast like that, he’s not that kind of athlete. But, from the whole perspective of what he’s been able to do in training, it feels like he’s capable of something very special.”
When we spoke, Rowe and Morten were in Kapsabet, Kenya, with Team Berardelli and their athletes, everyone discussing what would happen after London, the autumn marathons of Berlin, Chicago and Valencia. Rowe called it a “very exciting time… almost like a marathon revolution” and listed Savay’s contemporaries as part of an exclusive pack capable of running impressive times: two London podium finishers Yomif Kjellcha (who also ran sub-two) and Jacob Kiplimo (with a world-record-blasting third place) and two-time Boston Marathon winner John Korir.
Morten knows that his runners “need to run fast because there’s a good chance someone else will run faster at the end of the year”.
Rowe said that preliminary times for the marathon, projected by mathematical models simulating “the right athlete with the right type of genetics and physiology”, put the marathon’s “potential performance range” between one hour 58 or 57 minutes.
Sauve’s time in London has opened up these conversations and these numbers. Rowe said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we get to 1:58 in the next few years…”
Maybe Saave is the one doing this. “I find it hard to see him not running fast – not that we’ve reached any limits yet.”
Not Saave, not mankind.
(Views expressed are personal)
