I have never tried bicarb with any of my athletes – which was why I was a bit vauge in my post above. I agree that it would be very hard to make it work if you were running several rounds in a day, you would need to experiment a lot before trying it in competition.
I do know that it has been shown to have performance benefits for good quality (elite) athletes. But this is not a new thing and the fact that few people use it shows that maybe it’s not so useful in the real world.
Perhaps I’ll try to dig out some references if anyone is interested.