Lactate and glucose correlations
 

Hi everyone. Curious if anyone here is doing field testing with lactate during their rides?

I’ve been digging into the data recently and I'm wondering if anyone has tried correlating spot-check lactate numbers with live data from a CGM or hydration sensor?

I know it's a bit of a dark art, but I'm trying to dial in my optimal zones. Specifically, seeing how fueling strategies (glucose trends) might be impacting lactate accumulation. Is anyone seeing actionable patterns there, or is it just too much noise?

I don't think professional teams would keep bleeding millionaire riders if they had found a way to estimate lactate from other data (and they have a lot of data)...

The trend seems to be more carbs, before, during and after effort, as much as 180 g per hour for some competitors...

You would think that by now they would have a CLM (Continuous Lactate Monitor).

Well, maybe they do: IDRO — World's first real-time lactate measurement. Measure lactate in sweat (not blood), and apparently not yet available to purchase.

Lactate gets cleared by good lungs and good blood flow. Knowing when it get to our threshold for overwhelming our muscles is a thing. Being able to monitor it more directly than just HR data will be a game changer for all of us. But for most of us not until the cost is low enough for use as a additional sensor to a Garmin or other device.

Perhaps there are some out there, but the IDRO website didn't seem like this was in a commercial marketing phase yet. IMO, potentially, lactate information will be better and more useful information than what a PM provide.

That's impressive... but we might have to wait a few years to see that on the markets, first they'll sell them at a high price to professional teams...

Also it sounds much less straightforward to measure than power, or heart rate, lactate is produced and accumulates in the muscles, partially transported in the blood, and even less across the skin, with many differences in personal metabolism and sweat...

Thanks everyone for your responses! We're actually asking because we're trying to develop a continuous lactate monitor ourselves which we've been testing recently. It also measures glucose and hydration, hence why I'm trying to understand how others might be using these measures as I'd love to compare notes.

Anything you can share publicly?

For sure, we're building Performr (should come up if you google it)

Our website has some articles on what we're testing and how the lactate testing is going

Sort of. They're fairly cost effective though it's also true that they're in very high demand in professional teams so there's a good chance we'll be there first. That said, it's important to us that this is a product that is accessible to everyone so we've designed it at a fairly mass-market consumer price point.

This is super helpful. Thank you so much for coming back and letting us know. Our wearable is called Performr btw, if you wanted to check it out. Thanks again and we'll continue to post updates on progress and development.