The Real Secret Behind Every Marathon World Record Since 2018
When Eliud Kipchoge shattered the marathon world record in Berlin in 2018, the running world erupted. Cameras zoomed in on his feet. Analysts dissected his stride. Shoe brands scrambled to claim credit. The Nike Vaporfly and its carbon-fiber plate had arrived, and everyone assumed the shoe was the star of the show.
But there was another product on that course — one that never made the front page, never appeared in a splashy ad campaign, and never sparked a regulatory debate with World Athletics. Yet it has been present at every single marathon world record broken since 2018. It is not a shoe. It is not a wearable. It is what the athletes put inside their bodies: Maurten sports nutrition.
Understanding why Maurten has become the quiet constant behind distance running's greatest achievements reveals something important — not just about elite sport, but about how the average runner should think about race-day fueling.
What Is Maurten?
Maurten is a Swedish sports nutrition company founded in 2015 with a single, science-driven idea: deliver carbohydrates to an athlete's gut in a more efficient and stomach-friendly way than anything previously available. The company's flagship innovation is a hydrogel technology that encapsulates high concentrations of carbohydrates — a mix of fructose and glucose — inside a gel-like matrix that forms naturally in the acidic environment of the stomach.
This matters enormously. Traditional sports gels and drinks often cause gastrointestinal distress at the high carbohydrate doses needed to sustain world-record marathon pace. Maurten's hydrogel allows athletes to consume significantly more carbohydrate per hour without the nausea, cramping, and bathroom emergencies that have derailed races throughout the sport's history.
Their product line includes the Drink Mix 160, Drink Mix 320, Gel 100, and the Gel 100 CAF (which contains 100mg of caffeine). All are built around the same hydrogel platform and all are designed to work together as part of a cohesive fueling strategy rather than as standalone products.
The Numbers That Tell the Story
Since Eliud Kipchoge's 2:01:39 world record in Berlin in September 2018, every subsequent improvement to the men's and women's marathon world record has been run by an athlete using Maurten products. Kipchoge himself went on to break his own record with a stunning 2:01:09 in Berlin in 2022, and then Kelvin Kiptum obliterated that with a 2:00:35 in Chicago in 2023 — all while following carefully designed Maurten fueling protocols.
On the women's side, Tigst Assefa's extraordinary 2:11:53 world record in Berlin in 2023 told the same nutritional story. The common thread through all of these performances is not a single shoe brand, not a specific training camp, and not one coach. It is Maurten.
Elite athletes consuming 80 to 120 grams of carbohydrate per hour during marathon racing — a previously uncomfortable or impractical target — became not only achievable but standard practice with Maurten's hydrogel system. Sports scientists now widely regard this fueling threshold as a meaningful contributor to the wave of record-breaking performances seen in the sport over the past seven years.
Why Carbon Plate Shoes Got All the Credit
The carbon plate running shoe revolution was impossible to ignore. The technology was visible, it was testable in laboratory settings, and it produced measurable gains in running economy. The shoes looked different, felt different, and were controversial enough to generate headlines. World Athletics even introduced regulations limiting stack height.
Nutrition, by contrast, is invisible. You cannot see Maurten gels in a finish-line photo. Fueling strategies are rarely discussed in post-race press conferences. And because nutrition has always been considered a personal or marginal factor in performance, most casual observers simply never thought to ask what the world's best marathon runners were eating at miles 6, 12, 18, and 24.
This oversight has led to a widespread misunderstanding of what actually drives performance at the highest level of the sport. The shoe matters, but the fuel matters just as much — perhaps more.
What This Means for Recreational Runners
The lessons from elite marathon fueling are directly applicable to runners at every level. Here is what the science and the world record data suggest you should take seriously:
Carbohydrate intake during the marathon is not optional. If you are racing a marathon at any competitive effort, consistent fueling from early in the race — not just when you feel depleted — is essential for maintaining pace in the final miles.
Gut training is a real and trainable skill. Your digestive system can adapt to consuming and processing carbohydrates at higher rates during exercise. Practice your race-day fueling strategy in long training runs, not for the first time on race morning.
Product quality and formulation matter. Not all gels and drinks are created equal. Maurten's hydrogel technology was purpose-built to solve a real physiological problem. Understanding why a product works helps you make smarter choices for your own racing.
The best gear upgrade might not be footwear. Before spending hundreds of dollars on the latest carbon plate super-shoe, evaluate whether your fueling strategy is optimized. A well-fed runner in older shoes will often outperform a poorly fueled runner in the most expensive pair on the market.
The Bigger Picture for Endurance Sport
The story of Maurten is ultimately a story about the convergence of food science and elite athletics. It is a reminder that human performance is a system — biomechanics, physiology, psychology, equipment, and nutrition all working in concert. Isolating one variable and calling it the reason for a world record is always an oversimplification.
Carbon plate shoes changed running. That is true. But so did hydrogel sports nutrition. The difference is that one innovation wore flashy colors and the other came in a small foil packet, quietly doing its job at every single mile marker where history was made.
The next time a marathon world record falls, look beyond the shoes. Ask what was in the bottles and the pockets of the athletes doing the impossible. Increasingly, the answer has been the same since 2018 — and it is worth paying attention to.