donating blood, how long til can run&feel normal?

Giving blood will make you 20 seconds slower in the mile and it will take you 7 weeks to recover fully. I would advise against it if you care about your performance, plenty of people who have no reason not to give.

But, easy runs will be fine about two hours after. It is only hard efforts where you're f'd.

It seems like there is a lot of variation here, both between individuals and for any given individual based on factors like sleep, diet, etc.

My wife and brother can run (or workout) the afternoon after giving blood. My bro works can work out hard the afternoon the day after a morning blood donation.

I feel like complete shite afterward and can run easy only on the next day. The next day (i.e. two days out) can be moderate for me but I wouldn't do a hard run until after 2 full days have passed.

Donating and using blood is a stupid and dangerous technology.

I used to be able to give blood and be fine after 3 days - til 3 yrs ago - I gave blood and could barely run hard for a month. No idea what happened, but I am not taking that chance again.

I always was able to run that day (slowly), and returned to feeling "normal" in about 3 days.

I run home (5 miles) on day I give blood at work, and feel fine. Workouts are back to normal in 2 weeks. Your body regenerates the red cells in that time (presuming normal nutrition), so no reason to expect any effects beyond that. I generally give after spring races (don't race in summer much) and after fall races, and here and there in the winter. Certainly is a need, good for you for doing it. If I was still in college and I was racing for a team that was counting on me, probably wouldn't do it, or at least would do so far more sparingly.

Your wife and brother might be able to do a workout that afternoon, but if they tried to do a race or time trial, their performance would be severely affected.

Donating a pint of blood results in a depletion of about 10 percent of your total blood volume. Of that, only about 160cc are red blood cells. The fluid component, the remaining 290cc, is replaced within hours, but the red blood cell replacement takes about seven weeks, (which is why you may not donate more often than every two months).

Assuming that your cardiac output (the amount of blood pumped by the heart) remains constant, a drop in hemoglobin concentration associated with donating blood will reduce your oxygen delivery to working muscles by 10 percent. Still, when you are at rest, or even during moderate levels of exercise, oxygen delivery, even at this decreased capacity, far outpaces demand.

However, once you reach a heart rate that is around 5 to 10 percent below your usual anaerobic threshold, your body's demand for oxygen will outpace its supply. For example, if your metabolism typically becomes anaerobic at a heart rate of 170, then after donating blood you will become anaerobic at a heart rate of between 157 and 164 beats per minute.

For me, this translated into running a comfortable 4:45 one weekend, donating blood, then collapsing after a 5:04 the next weekend. This caught me totally off guard because I had felt fine on easy runs, and even pretty normal on a 6x1000 workout. It took me about six weeks to get back below 4:50.

It takes your body SEVEN WEEKS to fully replace the red blood cells you lose, so you will not be at 100% for maximal efforts until then. So if you care about your performance during that time, don't give blood. There are plenty of people who have no reason not to.

I gave double red cells about a month ago. Workouts felt like crap for about a week; even easy runs were sketchy for a few days. A ten miler that I raced last weekend (so about 2 1/2 weeks after donating) blew up in my face; I don't think it had anything to do with giving blood, but I guess it isn't out of the question.

Excellent summary. Well done!

not so young dude wrote:

So not so young dude,

Could donating blood be used to back off intensity (presumably to avoid injury/burnout), while still developing anaerobic mechanisms? If so, is it legal to do so?

That's an interesting question. I'm not sure. You would probably be able to get some anaerobic adaptations at slower paces, but it's hard to say how these would translate back to faster running. My guess is that you would be better off just cutting your overall training load and throwing in some easy anaerobic work. But it's an interesting idea.

As for legality, I'm sure it's fine. As long as you don't put the blood back in.

Why do you care since you are going to dope anyway?

Realistically, I would not advise anyone who has a serious race in the next, say, three months to donate blood.

Aside from the question of how long it takes to get your blood levels up to snuff (this varies by the individual, naturally), whilst your levels are down your training itself is (usually) going to take a hit.

So, for example, anyone with a conference meet at the end of October should not donate after July.

I have NO DOUBT that there are individuals who have donated closer to a major race and come through just fine. But this is a hard thing to predict for any individual. Better safe than sorry--if you're in school and feel *compelled* to donate, do so the week after your last spring-track meet (and write off summer racing), and the week after your last xc race in the fall (and write off December track meets).

I donate blood about very eight weeks, so I follow this topic closely. (I am a fitness marathon runner, i.e. not a threat to win races.)

My conclusions:

- Recovery varies dramatically from person to person, and (in my personal experience) even donation to donation.

- You can help yourself by hydrating well before and after a donation, and eating red meat in the following weeks.

- Vegetarians and especially vegans have lower measured iron levels - opinions differ on what that means for health and recovery.

- The time between donations varies from country to country. In the US it's 8 weeks - most places it's longer.

- The "7 weeks recovery" mentioned by others poster is not an absolute or agreed upon number.

- Even as a non-competitive runner, I try not to schedule a donation within 4-5 weeks of a race.