From 4:18 To 3:59 In The Mile: How Riley Witt Built Bicarb 3.0 From His Dorm, The Talent Myth, And Why If You're Not Willing To Spend $2,000 On Your Running, You're Not Serious
THE RUNNING EFFECT PODCAST
Dominic Schlueter
4.9 • 822 Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Website: bicarb.shop
Riley Witt doesn't think you need talent to break four minutes in the mile—he just thinks you need to want it bad enough to spend $35.
The Northwest Missouri State senior came on to break down the philosophy behind that take, and what followed was one of the more honest conversations about athletic ambition, economic reality, and the compounding edge of doing everything right.
Witt grew up in a class of 36 students in Osage, Iowa, ran a 4:40 mile his freshman year of high school, and genuinely believed that was fast.
He didn't have the training partners, the competition, or the context to know otherwise. What he had was an Exercise Science background, an obsessive attention to marginal gains, and a willingness to do things differently.
That's where Bicarb comes in. Witt launched Bicarb 3.0 out of necessity (he wanted a sodium bicarbonate product that actually worked without the GI catastrophe), and built it into a business from his dorm room after going from a 4:11 mile to a 4:03 in two weeks on his first homebrew version.
He walks Dominic through the science of how bicarbonate buffers hydrogen ions at the cellular level, why the longer distances are starting to adopt it, and what his proprietary kinetic gradient matrix technology does differently than anything else on the market.
Underneath all of it is a runner who just ran 1:48 at the MIAA Outdoor Championships, holds a 4.0 GPA, and has one box left to check: a Division II national title. He's currently ranked second in the country in the 800m.
The clock is ticking.
Tap into the Riley Witt Special.
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S H O W N O T E S
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Instagram: @riwitt03
Website: bicarb.shop
Transcript
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| 0:51.8 | Today on the podcast, you're going to hear some hot takes. You're going to hear some science class, and you're going to hear some hot takes you're going to hear some science class |
| 0:56.8 | and you're going to hear the story of a man who went from decently mediocre in high school to |
| 1:01.5 | one of the top guys in division to running he's run 145 and 359 both this year while scaling |
| 1:09.0 | simultaneously his company shop buy carb which is the best buy carb on the |
| 1:13.7 | market. He's looking to take down big bi carb and he talks in this episode about the science |
| 1:18.4 | of biacarb, the history of biacarb, what this thing you're seeing on social media actually is, |
| 1:22.4 | what it does, and why his product is the best on the market. We also dive into his story and some of his |
| 1:28.3 | hot takes, which I'm honestly here for. If you're not willing to spend $2,000, you're not |
| 1:33.3 | actually serious about setting a PR or serious about your running. I love it. I'm here for it. |
| 1:38.6 | I'm always here for the conversations. Raleigh is a friend. He's a brother. He is someone who |
| 1:43.0 | I think is heavily investing in the sport in the best of ways with his company, shop by carb, as well as just the way he talks about the sport of running. |
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