Tim Reed

I could be wrong, but there’s something about lactate gels that I’m still trying to understand… From my perspective as a chemical engineer and coach, I’m struggling to see how exogenous lactate supplementation could provide a meaningful advantage in athletic performance. I understand the importance of lactate as a fuel and its role in energy metabolism. In fact, I find it fascinating how much we continue to learn about this molecule. However, when I try to put things into numbers, a few questions come to mind. For example, a gel containing 5 g of lactate provides roughly 18 kcal of potential energy. To put that into perspective, a 70 kg cyclist producing 300 W, assuming a mechanical efficiency of around 23%, may be expending approximately 19 kcal/minute. Of course, the potential benefits may not be purely energetic. There could be effects on metabolic signaling, substrate utilization, or even specific applications during high-intensity efforts. But this is where my main question comes in: if our bodies are already producing, transporting, and oxidizing substantial amounts of lactate during exercise, how much of an additional physiological impact can a relatively small exogenous dose really have? And more importantly, would that impact be large enough to translate into a measurable performance improvement compared with a well-designed conventional fueling strategy? I’m not saying these products don’t work, nor am I ruling out potentially interesting applications in specific competitive scenarios. I simply think we should be careful when moving from an interesting physiological mechanism to conclusions about its practical benefits. As a coach, I’m interested not only in whether something could work metabolically, but also in how much it actually improves performance, for whom, and under what circumstances. And as a chemical engineer, I naturally find myself thinking about doses, concentrations, mass balances, kinetics, and the magnitude of the potential effect. Maybe I’m missing something important, particularly from a metabolic signaling perspective. Perhaps the real value of exogenous lactate lies not in its energy contribution, but in its ability to trigger physiological responses that are not directly proportional to the amount ingested. That’s a possibility I’m genuinely interested in understanding better. Because recognizing that lactate plays a fundamental role in athletic performance is one thing. Demonstrating that consuming it in gel form provides an additional performance advantage is another. I’d genuinely love to hear from those researching this topic and better understand what the current evidence tells us. At the end of the day, I think we’re all aiming for the same thing: a better understanding of physiology and better decisions based on evidence, rather than just promising mechanisms. And one final thought: I genuinely believe we haven’t yet fully explored or exploited the potential of high-carbohydrate fueling strategies, particularly when it comes to optimizing carbohydrate availability, gut training, and individual tolerance. Before looking for the next marginal gain through new substrates, I wonder how much performance we could still unlock by simply getting the fundamentals of carbohydrate fueling better.