George Brooks spent five decades studying lactate while most of the sports world treated it as a waste product, and his lab is the one that showed how it can be a fuel source. His partner Iñigo San Millán brought that research to professional cycling, and Enervit built a gel around it.
The thing you’ve blamed for the burn in your legs since your first hard interval? It’s actually a fuel. And for the first time, you can drink it.
Here's the full story behind the innovative lactate fuel. Five reasons Enervit’s Lactate Gel Mix changes how we fuel.
1. It’s a third fuel source.
For 20 years, gel innovation has been about ratios: how much glucose to how much fructose. I’ll make a bold prediction. In a few years, we won’t be talking about 2:1 ratios anymore. We’ll be talking about three-source fueling: glucose, fructose, and lactate. And every gel company will be scrambling to add it to their formula.
The reason it’s additive: your gut caps how much glucose and fructose you can absorb per hour. Lactate doesn’t wait in that line. It travels its own pathway into your bloodstream, so it’s fuel on top of your carbs, not instead of them.
2. It works in 15 minutes, not 45.
About two years ago, I visited the Berkeley lab where lactate was discovered to be a fuel source, run by Prof. George Brooks. He walked me through the human testing. My layman’s version: they tag the lactate, glucose, and fructose with different carbon isotopes, then the athlete drinks the mixture and gets on a treadmill wearing a mask. When a fuel is oxidized (science-speak for burned as energy), you exhale its isotope, so the mask captures exactly when, and how much of, each fuel gets used.
What it showed: lactate starts burning almost immediately and peaks at 15 minutes. Glucose starts slow and doesn’t peak until 45.
When you’re fading at the end of a race or at the bottom of a hard climb, 45 minutes is too long to wait. Lactate is there when you need it.
3. The people behind it wrote the science.
Prof. Brooks has spent five decades on lactate. He’s the world’s leading expert on how your body uses it. The rest of the world called it a waste product. He proved it’s one of your most efficient fuels.
His partner on this is Iñigo San Millán: Tadej Pogačar’s former coach, University of Colorado professor, and a former colleague of mine at the Garmin pro cycling team. Enervit then spent two full seasons turning their science into a gel with the delivery and taste to hold up in real races.
4. Tadej has been racing it for 2.5 years.
Tadej Pogačar is the best cyclist in the world (ever?), and he’s been using early versions of this for two and a half years. Nobody knew, even if there were some whispers. In July, he and his UAE squad raced the finished formula all the way to his fifth Tour de France.
5. This isn’t just for the pros.
I’ll guarantee what you’re going to see next: the final hour of every major marathon fueled by lactate, and every finish line at Kona. The last hour of every Tour stage? Already happening.
But frankly, I believe the data will show this is even more effective for the rest of us. And it isn’t just for really long workouts either. It’s the optimal fueling for every 60-to-90-minute high-intensity session: one pouch covers 100% of your carbs, plus you get the faster-acting energy from lactate. My one-hour interval on the treadmill or bike is now fully fueled with a single pack, for under $10.
How I’m using it
Riding: squeeze one pouch into a 550ml Grip Bottle, dilute, and sip it over an hour. Remember, this is a full 90g of carbs. On two-hour rides, I stretch it across both hours and layer regular gels on top.
Running: I use the 500ml HydraPak handheld run flask. For a one-hour run, that bottle alone covers all my fueling and gets me fluids too. For two hours, I fuel normally in hour one and start this in hour two so I’m not carrying it the whole way.
No bottle? You can sip it straight. Fair warning, it’s salty. And stick to one pouch per day: it's 10 g of sodium lactate, which works out to 2,050mg of sodium, so count it toward your total intake.
