Is Sodium Bicarbonate Effective for Mountain Athletes?

A real world Maurten Bicarb test

This week I’d like to share a video I did with my friend and sports nutrition colleague, Vic Johnson, testing Maurten’s new sodium bicarbonate system. For the uninitiated, sodium bicarbonate is a supplement that has been used for decades and is pretty well-researched in the scientific literature. Primarily used as an ergogenic aid in short-term exercise applications such as sprinting, rowing, or combat sports, sodium bicarb acts as an extracellular buffer, bringing hydrogen ions out of the system which helps to fend off fatigue during high-intensity exercise. However, there have been many reported side effects (note: track runners over the years trialing, and failing, using baking soda to try and buffer fatigue causing diarrhea and vomiting). Thus, the Swedish sports nutrition company Maurten set out to try and make a product that is effective and tolerable.

Maurten sent Vic some of the product for us to test, so we made a couple of videos to test earlier this fall to test its effectiveness in trail running. We made a simple and highly unscientific test: a short uphill time trial, tracking time, heart rate, and lactate levels while either using just carbohydrate (gel) or just the bicarbonate system.

We wanted to discuss how this might be applicable in mountain athletes training and competing in long distances - say ultra runners, skimo athletes, or gravel racing. After all, this stuff was first spotted with Kilian Jornet wolfing down a tub at last year’s UTMB. What did we discover? You’ll have to watch the experiment to find out ;)

Part 1: The Test

Part 2: The Discussion

- jackson