So they told me that it takes your body 24 hours to replenish the pint of blood that they take from you. what they didn't say was that that was just plasma. i later found out that the red blood cells take 3-5 weeks to get back to normal. My question is this--if i still train effort based, will i hit the same times? Is this going to effect my season or will i just feel like crap for a few weeks? i ran the day of and it didn't feel any different, really.
My personal experience,and this is only subjective, is that top end efforts will be hampered for at least 5 days.
Usually feel back to normal after 2 weeks. Donating does stimulate the appetite.
I once read somewhere that newer corpuscles are better O2 carriers and there might be a slight short bump in vo2 max as a result.
Your season is not on the ropes. If you have a race within a week you my be a bit flat.
Hats off to you for partaking in this simple yet sublime humanitarian act.
I went through a similar experience in college. It took me about 2 weeks to feel totally recovered.