The Strange, Exciting Science of Lactate Gels
Why I’m tiptoeing toward lactate gels (and why you might want to watch closely).
David Roche from The Feed <[email protected]>
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TheFeed promotes the science behind lactate gels, highlighting their increasing use among professional athletes. The company explores the history and research behind lactate as a fuel source, challenging the common perception that it is a negative factor in athletic performance. TheFeed delves into the story of two researchers and their groundbreaking work on lactate.
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Early this year, I got a secret email. I felt like James Bond (though I doubt he sees a smattering of little hairs every time he takes off his Feed hat). I clicked on the links in the email, showing that I’m now old enough to fall for a phishing scam. But this was legit.
The secret? Lactate gels were already taking over the pro cycling peloton, and no one was talking about it.
7 months later, the rumor was that the Tour de France was dominated by athletes taking lactate gels (led by Team UAE and Tadej Pogacar, who were taking Enervit Lactate, though the exact use patterns are unconfirmed). Yomif Kejelcha took them to run the half marathon world record and a sub-2 hour marathon (subject to the same uncertainty). When whispers of a new product become screams from the record-books so rapidly, it’s time to pay attention.
What’s going on? It’s time to dive into one of the weirder, cooler performance science stories I’ve ever seen.
Science History
I think we can dive in by tracing the paths of two researchers separated by 40 years. Way back in 1986, George Brooks published a review study called “The Lactate Shuttle During Exercise and Recovery.” The basic theory involved lactate being used as a fuel source that was transported between tissues in the body.
I love to think back to the 1980s and imagine how revolutionary that idea must have been. Lactate levels rise during hard efforts. You’ve probably heard of “lactate threshold,” the idea that when lactate starts to rise above the body’s capacity for clearance, hard efforts become unsustainable. The clear conclusion is that lactate must be a bad thing, and the goal is to keep it low. “Lactic acid” is a bad thing, right? RIGHT?
Brooks and others piloted a revolutionary idea. What if the lactate/pyruvate biochemical process acted alongside hydrogen ion-related acidosis to create the illusion that “lactic acid” caused fatigue? The whole time, lactate was a bodyguard, not a boogeyman.
Fast forward to 2026. My favorite modern researcher is Aitor Viribay Morales, a brilliant scientist who published some of the first high-carb studies. To me, he is the scientific face of the performance revolution that came from high-carb fueling. I may or may not have a poster of him on the ceiling above my bed.
Early this year, I heard that Aitor dropped some of his other roles (including working for pro cycling and running teams) to go all-in on exogenous lactate supplementation with his company From Lab To Field and the gel Exolactate. At the same time, George Brooks and Inigo San Millan were making similar power moves into helping develop lactate-based energy gels for Enervit.
I had always heard that consuming lactate tastes like swallowing rancid motor oil, plus it breaks down too readily to be absorbed. There seemed to have been a breakthrough where researchers were able to make lactate stable and tolerable for oral consumption.
It felt like the moment in the movie when all of the animals start running in the same direction. If there’s anything I’ve learned from those movies, it’s RUN IN THAT SAME DIRECTION.
Lactate Overview
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