New study says hydrogel energy products found to have 'no additional cycling performance benefit' versus standard carbohydrate drinks

There are a couple of important things to note here (and Road.cc is jumping on a bashing bandwagon IMHO).

1. I have read Alex Hutchesons piece on this - he is pretty clear that the pre-load time was well below any sort of race pace effort. 

2. In support of Maurten's point is that Maurten don't claim 80g of carbs from Maurten are better than 80g of carbs from another source, they claim that one of the main benefits of their product is by increasing stomach clearing you reduce the risk of gastric distress (vomiting, uncontrolled bowels etc) - ultimately the studies showed very little gastric distress in either the Maurten group or the regular energy gels control.  The study ultimately says "because our protocol didn't cause gastric distress we conclude that Maurten won't prevent gastric distress" - its a bit like running a paper thin tire vs a gatorskin on a track and saying because neither got punctures, the gatorskin doesn't offer any greater puncture protection.

3. The studies have a very small sample size .  What was notable was that in the cycling study study twice the number of people suffered gastric distress with normal gels than with Maurten (this isn't statistically significant because the likelihood of getting a statistically significant result with 9 people is incredibly low unless there is an incredibly strong correlation).  That could easily be the take home point of the two recent Maurten studies and is as statistically significant as the alternative conclusion adopted by the paper re: gastro distress - you would be wrong to conclude Maurten stops gastric distress because in a sample of 9, two people vs 1 person is potentially meaningless and if a brand published this saying it was significant they'd be ripped to shreds (rightly) - there's simply not the level of data to reach that conclusion but the same is also true for the opposite hypothesis of the authors.

To be frank, I think that anyone presenting these studies as anything other than "a group of researchers did X, Y and Z and this is what the results say" is either a) clickbait, b) has an agenda and should be treated with scepticism, or c) both.

To be clear, I am not saying Maurten does or doesn't work - I'm saying that these studies don't help you answer the question "if I am participating in a long race where I will have to exert sustained high aerobic efforts, will Maurten help me perform better?". 

Author Jack - did you read the actual study, or just the abstract? It's hard to understand the credibility of Maurten's defence without knowing more about the 98min pre-test workout. If it's too easy (as Maurten suggests), then it won't come close to depleting the body's own stored glycogen, and so the benefits of topping up are small.

The benefits of maltodextrin/fructose mix aren't unique to Maurten, and have been well proven elsewhere. So no news here.

The whole point of the hydrogel additives is to stop the drink sloshing about in the stomach & gut, making it more 'bolus-like', whilst still being easy to consume and digest. It is believed that this 'sloshing' is one of the causes of GI distress, but it's really a run issue, not an on-the-bike issue, so I don't see that this study proves anything in that regard either.

I'm wondering why they did it at all. A more useful study would be to take a group who regularly suffer GI issues, and put them through a long duration (half-Ironman scale) test, using a randomised double-blind trial of hydrogel vs non-hydrogel drinks.

Disclosure: I'm a Maurten customer, and it makes all the difference to getting through a half-Ironman race without any GI issues. I'm also aware of other triathletes who struggled to finish a race without problems, and for whom Maurten took them to the podium.

EAT DRIPPING SANDWICHES!

Second to last paragraph is an editing disaster. "No...is yet" is a double negative. Then there's a semi colon followed by a subordinating conjunction when the main clause is before the semi colon. Ditch the semi colon and it makes more sense. If you cant replace a semi colon with a full stop and have each of the new sentences make sense, you're doing it wrong.

Come on, I'm paying nothing to read this, I expect more.

i have used it for long endurance events and got on really well with it, 6hrs+
one thing i noticed was the day after, usually would be trying to eat anything in sight, but didnt feel that depleted.

Confirmed - It still tastes like wallpaper paste

Seems they are shooting themselves in the foot by saying that the conditions under which their product would make a measureable difference are so extreme as to be irrelevant to the bulk of their market.