Alcohol has a terrible effect on running. An average of 10 beers will double the amount of time it normally takes one to finish a 5 mile easy run. Of course depending on body weight, tolerance, and other variables it will will vary a beer or two.
under no circumstances do I recomend binge drinking the morning before a workout or race.
I've heard that alchohol inhibits the body's ability to recover from hard workouts/races. Any truth to that?
Fat Sh*t wrote:
Awww...I'll just give it to you so you can read it for yourself without me having to wait for your reply. And it's not completely shut off, but nearly (79%) of it.
http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=3280601
FS...Between your posts and the Henry Rono story I will not drink again. Alcohol and hard training obviously don't mix. Blech.
Thanks for the link too.
"The effects of Alchol on Running"
...I know it affects spelling
hamburglar wrote:
I've heard that alchohol inhibits the body's ability to recover from hard workouts/races. Any truth to that?
That's probably true. Alcohol binds to the hemoglobin in your blood which will decrease the number of RBC's to carry oxygen to your muscles, etc. Since you recover aerobically, it stands to reason that you won't recover as well when you can't carry as much O2 to the muscles.
out of curiousity approximatly how long do the affects of alchol and the increased in recovery time last after drinking? Just until the alchol is metabilized, days, weeks????
thanks
Alcohol would inhibit your ability to recover if you got drunk, since during that time your body slows down. But the effects would only persist if you basically over-trained in the following days and failed to take into account the fact that your body may be slightly less recovered than it otherwise would be.
The article linked above only takes place over four hours, and (just judging from the abstract) all it seems to say is that alcohol is the preferred fuel in the hours after drinking. How that affects the body in the long- or short-term is not clear, at least in the abstract.