Does baking soda enhance cycling performance?

It makes cakes rise, but will it do the same for your sustainable power? We asked Andy Sparks

Baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate (often abbreviated to bicarb), has been investigated for its potential to improve exercise performance since 1930. The early pioneering work at Harvard University observed improved exercise tolerance when ingested orally. In the 1980s, research focused on cycling performance, leading to bicarb's widespread use in road and track racing. Given that the performance benefits have been widely known for decades, why is there renewed research and media interest in this supplement?

This may well be due to the Swedish nutrition company Maurten releasing its new "bicarb system" earlier this year. Elite riders and teams such as JumboVisma, Intermarché-CircusWanty and Team SD Worx have been using the product, prompting speculation that bicarb could be the not-so-secret ingredient accounting for Jumbo's spectacular success.

Is it really the miracle supplement that some have presented it as being? Let's first consider how research on bicarb has progressed since the 1980s. Traditionally, the supplement was only used in short-duration events of one to 12 minutes, i.e. useful for some track events but not for multiple-hour road races. However, recent research suggests that if blood bicarbonate can be elevated for prolonged periods, it might well be performance-enhancing for much longer exercise bouts.

The inconvenient truth about bicarb is its side effects, especially when using the effective dose of 300mg per kilo of body mass consumed either in a drink or capsules.