Sodium bicarb in an energy gel? The same baking soda you put in your cakes or see listed in your cleaning products?
You read it right.
Sodium bicarbonate energy gels are now a “thing” in an intriguing step forward for this potentially gut-broiling performance enhancer.
Mnstry has launched the catchily titled “Bicarb Gel 40 Lemon 1:0.8,” an energy gel that delivers a potent cocktail of carbohydrates and blood buffering-bicarb.
The German brand partners Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Canyon-SRAM, gravel superstar Rosa Klöser, and many more, and it’s claiming big things for its groundbreaking baking soda slurpee.
“With its advanced encapsulation technology, our new gel allows athletes strategic bicarbonate uptake during performance or intense training. It’s science-backed and built for real-world racing,” said Mnstry nutrition brainiac Robert Gorgos.
Baking powder in a bonk-buster carb gel sounds weird.
But this new product could be a breakthrough in the historically messy world of bicarb supplementation.
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The gut-bothering history of bicarb
Supplementing with sodium bicarbonate is nothing new.
Riders and runners have been guzzling a few teaspoons of Arm & Hammer (other baking sodas are available) in a glass of water before short explosive efforts like time trials, prologues, or 5ks since the 1980s.
This crude bicarb boost typically went one of two ways.
Worst case, explosive G.I. issues. The high alkalinity of raw sodium bicarbonate can throw stomach acid out of whack and set the guts bubbling.
Best case, the bicarb sits safe and “buffers” blood acidity. Bicarbonate “neutralizes” the hydrogen ions that accumulate under exercise load and impair muscle performance.
This buffering impact allows athletes to go deep for longer, and has more recently been thought to improve subsequent recovery.
Also read: How Bicarb became the latest must-have of endurance
Performance supplementation brands took note. Enteric-coated bicarb pills and skin lotions arrived as a more gut-friendly workaround to a glass of the abrasive agent.
But until now, bicarb was a pre-competition thing. Mixing white powders or swallowing pills mid-race isn’t a good look.
Maurten’s wildly popular “Bicarb System” almost entirely removed the risk of G.I. distress when it blew up the world of endurance on launch in 2023, but its hydrogel mixing bowl method kept it on the team bus.
Unless you’re Michael Woods of course, who famously tucked into a bowl of Maurten bicarb while in the middle of the peloton at the Zürich road worlds.
Taking sodium bicarb beyond the startline
But sodium bicarb supplementation needed to evolve beyond the startline of endurance.
While it was initially believed that this powerful blood neutralizer was only effective for short-format events, there’s growing evidence that it works over the long haul, too.
In fact, the window of effectiveness could be up to four hours.
Athletes going longer – say, the spring classics or a sprawling Tour de France mountain stage – would need an initial load followed by a mid-race top-up if they want to be buffered all the way to the finish line.
Hence why Woods made himself a meme mid-way through road worlds, or why mountain GOAT Kilian Jornet kicked up a kerfuffle with his aid station slurping in the 20-hour UTMB ultramarathon.
That was this “soup” I was taking in UTMB. In long distance the effects of bicarbonate are not as studied as in short distance events, but I felt it worked in different ways:
@NickMDanielson pic.twitter.com/JEibkkVyrj— kilian jornet (@kilianj) February 27, 2023
A fresh bake for bicarbonate of soda
In theory, Mnstry’s gel puts baking soda into the middle of the raging peloton.
Sodium bicarbonate might now join carbs, caffeine, and ketones in the mid-race musette.
“Bicarb Gel 40 Lemon 1:0.8 is suitable for ambitious athletes and professionals who want to utilize the benefits of bicarbonate over a longer period during a competition or an intensive training session,” reads the Mnstry marketing blurb.
The gel contains 40 grams of carbohydrate in the gold-standard 1:08 glucose-fructose ratio, and a 5-gram sodium-potassium bicarb mix. The bicarbonate is “encapsulated,” meaning it shouldn’t cause gut bombs.
The 40-gram carbohydrate content means it ticks the “high-carb fueling” box and should fit into any existing nutritional strategy.
When used correctly, Mnstry’s new performance bomb should tick the bicarb box too.
It’s recommended that athletes take 0.3 grams of bicarb per kilo of body weight for effective buffering. For example, a 70kg athlete requires around 21g.
Four bicarb gels, or a pre-ride load and a few mid-race, would put that rider at their magic number.
Sold out online but no athlete seal of approval, yet
The Mnstry bicarb gel is still very young, and so it remains to be seen how effective it is.
It will be intriguing to see how far it will be taken up by sponsored athletes like Red Bull Rogla and Canyon-SRAM Kasia.
And like many “newer” nutritional interventions, loading with sodium bicarb mid-session might need some learning.
Mnstry’s bicarb gel is not 100 percent guaranteed to save athletes from gut bombs, and OD’ing could cause significant water retention. In the longer term, too much sodium bicarbonate will have an athlete’s medic raging about their patient’s blood pressure.
Of course, Mnstry has applied the regulation “don’t take too many” caveat in the sales blurb.
But it’s not all bad.
Sodium bicarbonate is one of the few WADA-legal performance supplements that’s proven to actually work.
Mid-race bicarb loading could be the half-percent hack that helps riders push through a decisive attack or a finishing sprint.
At €3.29 ($3.75) per packet, Mnstry gels aren’t as prohibitively priced as rival bicarb solutions, and are only a little more costly than a regular carbohydrate product. They’re also tested by Informed Sport.
We’ve not yet tested the product here at Velo but are in contact with Mnstry to learn more.
The fact that the bicarb gel sold out within one week of launch either means Mnstry’s marketing department needs a pay rise, or that it’s pretty darn good.