Q&A
Runner’s World meets the man behind Maurten, the product fuelling the world’s fastest marathoners
Olof Sköld, the man behind Maurten energy gels, the choice of marathon champions
WHEN ELIUD KIPCHOGE took a massive 78 seconds off the world marathon record at the Berlin Marathon in September, much was made of what was on his feet, the lauded Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4% Flyknit. Less was made about what was in his drinks bottle: Maurten.
And it’s not just Kipchoge who’s using the stuff, either. The winners of 14 consecutive World Marathon Major events used Maurten for their midrace fuelling, including Sir Mo Farah during his Chicago win in October. Perhaps most tellingly, while Kipchoge and co are paid handsome sums by their shoe sponsors, they are choosing to use Maurten purely because they think it works.
So what’s so remarkable about it? While traditional gels are water and carbohydrates mixed into syrups, Maurten is a hydrogel, which is easily absorbed by the body and can be packed with carbs (allowing for up to 100g of uptake an hour) and all without, the manufacturers say, any of the possible gut irritations associated with a high volume of carb intake. It’s a little more expensive than a standard gel – 12 gels will set you back about €40.32 (£35.35) at maurten.com – but not bank-breakingly so. RW caught up with Olof Sköld, the chief executive of Maurten, to find out more. Where did the idea for Maurten come from? We started the company because a friend of mine, the triathlete Mårten Fryknäs (from whose name the product came) wanted to create something that was better for the body and easier to tolerate. We analysed 64 companies in the US and Europe and found all of them essentially had the same product, albeit varying in colours and flavours. Maurten is different. It allows people to run a marathon using 100g per hour in carb uptake, which hasn’t been done before. Do you think you’re revolutionising marathon running? I’m Swedish so I’m not good at saying ‘yes’ to that, but I believe we are making history. Fourteen major marathon winners in a row have used our product. That’s just anecdotal, you could say, but we are not sponsoring the athletes – they use the products because they see a difference. Are you planning to take it to the masses and get it into big-city marathons? We are focused on the elite and the sub-elite right now. We are a start-up company, still quite small. Our drinks cost so much more to produce than a normal sports drink, as it needs to be far more controlled. To make all that happen for a big marathon – we couldn’t do that at the moment. But could the product help us mere mortals, too? Yes. If you are a fourhour marathoner compared to a twohour marathoner, you need more carbs because you’re running longer. We have received so many emails from people who have run marathon PBS, some of them taking 40 minutes from their previous time. What’s your relationship with Eliud Kipchoge like? I’ve met him a few times during races and other activities. Eliud is an inspiration – both as an athlete and as a person. His mindset is unique, something that he has shown during races, but also when he’s not in competition. Maurten was closely involved with Nike’s Breaking2 project. When do you think we’ll see a human run below two hours for the marathon? It’s an impossible question, but I think, in some ways, we have already proved that it is possible. In Berlin, without having pacers for 20km, Eliud showed the world that humans are almost without limitation. We have come a long way in achieving this goal, but it’s very difficult to say when it will happen, only that I’m quite sure it
will happen.