Forget power meters, heart rate straps, and HRV trackers.
Continuous lactate monitors could be a cyclist’s most powerful training tool, and they’re poised to enter the pro peloton sometime very soon.
“Biosensors will be the most important revolution since heart rate monitors over 40 years ago,” Iñigo San Millán, director of performance at UAE Team Emirates and Tadej Pogačar‘s personal coach, told Velo.
Training science is evolving beyond watts per kilo and beats per minute.
After years of making do with results from occasional lab tests, pro cyclists now want to see their blood lactate levels on their data screens.
Several companies are scrambling to develop the peloton’s long-sought live-reporting lactate biosensor, a piece of wearable tech that could also have a crucial role in medical diagnosis.
San Millán works across both healthcare and endurance sport and is collaborating on one such project right now.
“Biosensors are the future,” he said. “We should be able to measure different metabolites key to performance in real-time and have them displayed in your bike computer.”
Also read:
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- Could continuous glucose monitors change the game?
The development of continuous lactate monitoring [CLM] tech would allow endurance athletes to dial in their efforts like never before.
A peloton riding with CLM could have numbers on their headunits that give insight into when they’re exceeding their all-day “zone two” pace, and that indicates exactly how hard they can go before they blow.
The UCI already has an in-competition ban on biosensor devices that measure lactate, glucose, and other metabolic values.
Nonetheless, CLM would mean training efforts could be tuned to a half-watt, and the insights it affords could allow racing to become more refined than previously thought possible.
“There’s a lot of hype in the peloton about live lactate monitoring right now,” Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale rider Larry Warbasse told Velo. “It could be really big.”
Testing lactate way beyond the lab
Lactate is continually produced by the body. It remains at a stable level when at rest, and steadily increases when exercising at intensity.
Tracking lactate accumulation gives an insight into the key metabolic and physiological parameters that shape riders’ training plans and racing capacities.
For years, lactate testing has been conducted by staffers in sports labs and training camps.
Riders are now checking their own lactate levels way beyond the laboratory.
If you see a pro pulled to the side of the road and fiddling with a lancet when they would normally be pedaling, they’re likely checking blood lactate via an earlobe or finger pinprick test.
“I take my lactate a lot now in training to check I’m in the right zones,” Warbasse said. “I think everyone’s going to start much more accurately training their thresholds by consistently measuring these things.
“The ‘Norwegian method’ idea of intensity control and regular lactate testing every day, and in every session, is really coming into cycling,” Warbasse continued, referring to the lactate-focussed training concept that took Norwegian runners and triathletes to the top of their sports.
“Riders are for sure becoming a lot more interested in measuring [lactate] regularly, and there’s some real buzz around a live lactate tracker.”
Continuous lactate measurement ‘would be an evolution in training’
There’s been chatter for some time about the development of a live lactate sensor similar to the wearable continuous glucose monitors made popular by Supersapiens.
Abbott is the medical- and health-focused tech giant that provides Supersapiens with its biosensors and is among those racing to launch a first-mover CLM.
It made a limited launch of its “Lingo” glucose monitors earlier this year, and there are rumors Abbott will incorporate lactate tracking into the Lingo technology sometime soon.
Meanwhile, PK Vitality is also reported to be working on a competitor “K’Watch Athlete” continuous lactate product.
“If continuous lactate measurement is possible, it would be huge,” Astana Qazaqstan head of performance Vasilis Anastopoulos told Velo.
“What we’re doing now is essentially estimating the power that it takes to push a certain amount of lactate. When we’re doing the testing, the rider has to do the effort and then stop so we can take the sample, so it’s not a fully accurate result.”
The development of an effective CLM would enable riders to track the rise in their lactate in real time.
The laborious earlobe and fingertip pinprick testing of the present would be relegated to an antiquated and archived tool of the past.
“Until now, lactate testing has been a little slow and impractical. If it can be measured ‘live’ – and if it’s accurate and reliable, which could take time to develop – it would be a massive step,” Anastopoulos said. “We need to explore it, but if they [CLM] come, I for sure will use them.
“Real measurements, live, would be so beneficial for us trainers. It would change how we train so much.”
Really interesting paper from @ArturoCasadoAld et al. lays out the science of the “Norwegian method” of lactate-guided double threshold days, as used by Jakob Ingebrigsten and many others these days.https://t.co/SpLOZW5yrs
— Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience) February 23, 2023
The UCI ban means CLM won’t be seen at the Tour de France or Paris-Roubaix any time soon.
However, there’s no regulation stopping riders from using such devices in training, and it seems the peloton is purring at the prospect of a first-iteration CLM wearable.
The launch of a reliable continuous lactate monitor would see workouts become more effective and focused. The better understanding of power thresholds offered by CLM could see racing become more clinical than ever before.
Some insiders believe CLM’s arrival could change the game of training and performance in a similar way to how the first LOOK pedals, Polar Electros, and SRM units blew the doors off in decades past.
“Imagine if we have the opportunity to measure lactate real-time, it would be a huge step,” Anastopoulos said. “It would be an evolution in training.”
Representatives from Lingo and Supersapiens were reluctant to comment on the roll-out of lactate measurement upgrades when approached by Velo. San Millán’s CLM project is likewise under wraps.
For now, it’s uncertain when the first continuous lactate monitors will be made available. But you can be sure pro cyclists will be all over them when they arrive.