How much does alcohol affect training?

I am the same way except two glasses each nightYou're fine.

Beth543 wrote:

I am a college senior and an 800 runner. I'm definitely conscious of what I eat and try to eat healthy especially in season. However, I am over 21 and I have gotten into the habit of having a glass or two of wine every other night or so (a little more on the weekends). Also the occasional beer. It's nothing out of the ordinary for a normal college student, but I'm curious if this is affecting my training at all? It's not like I'm getting drunk every night, but I'm definitely drinking more than I have in years past. Should I cut back? I really haven't noticed a difference in my workouts, but I'm thinking more about when the spring season starts.

Students drinking wine? A runner drinking wine? What the hell is going on? Wine is for retired old people like me! What's wrong with beer? Which, in reasonable quantities, can be classed as a health food for hard training athletes!

Firstly, your right to be concerned about the affect of alcohol on you're running. Alcohol has serious affects on running. It will effect training in the negative way. If you're drinking gets out of hand you could loose in you're meets. Alcohol can effect you're personal life to. If you drink to much things can be bad.

Wine is considered an antioxidant, and is good for your cardiovascular health (as long as you don't over do it. Beer is also good, to an extent, due to the carbs that it contains (nick Symmonds is a beer junkie and look at him). Just watch how much you drink and keep it intact, and you'll be fine.

Beth543 wrote:

I am a college senior and an 800 runner. I'm definitely conscious of what I eat and try to eat healthy especially in season. However, I am over 21 and I have gotten into the habit of having a glass or two of wine every other night or so (a little more on the weekends). Also the occasional beer. It's nothing out of the ordinary for a normal college student, but I'm curious if this is affecting my training at all? It's not like I'm getting drunk every night, but I'm definitely drinking more than I have in years past. Should I cut back? I really haven't noticed a difference in my workouts, but I'm thinking more about when the spring season starts.

Anything is okay in moderation, but alcohol is right up there with the worst possible substances to put in your body as a runner. If you're a serious runner I'd say avoid it entirely. There are guys who have gotten away with drinking and still being world-class, but that does not imply that their alcohol consumption in no way hindered their performance. But if you're only a semi-serious runner, a glass of wine or beer a few times a week won't impact you too much. You won't be at your full potential, but you'll still be close.

heres the answer my friend wrote:

Firstly, your right to be concerned about the affect of alcohol on you're running. Alcohol has serious affects on running. It will effect training in the negative way. If you're drinking gets out of hand you could loose in you're meets. Alcohol can effect you're personal life to. If you drink to much things can be bad.

Oh my. Let me fix that for you. Please tell me you are not a college grad?

"Firstly, *you're* right to be concerned about the *effect* of alcohol on *your* running. Alcohol has serious *effects* on running. It will *affect* training in [a] negative way. If *your* drinking gets out of hand you could [lose] in *your* meets. Alcohol can *affect* *your* personal life *too*. If you drink *too* much [,] things can be bad."

When I was running 100-150 miles a week I found that I nearly always felt more recovered the next day if I'd had 4-5 beers, 16 ounce ones, the day before than if I only had 1 or 2 beers. Don't know about wine.

bro, alcohol is going to kill your performance. AT THE MOST, you should be having 2 glasses of wine every two weeks. PERIOD. If I were your coach I would be sending you to rehab

Grammar Pro-lease I think you need to get your sarcasm detector checked, or should I say detecter. Otherwise, your a looser.

Google "alcohol dependency". You could be the poster child.

Get help now.

Grammer Po-lease wrote:

heres the answer my friend wrote:

Firstly, your right to be concerned about the affect of alcohol on you're running. Alcohol has serious affects on running. It will effect training in the negative way. If you're drinking gets out of hand you could loose in you're meets. Alcohol can effect you're personal life to. If you drink to much things can be bad.

Oh my. Let me fix that for you. Please tell me you are not a college grad?

"Firstly, *you're* right to be concerned about the *effect* of alcohol on *your* running. Alcohol has serious *effects* on running. It will *affect* training in [a] negative way. If *your* drinking gets out of hand you could [lose] in *your* meets. Alcohol can *affect* *your* personal life *too*. If you drink *too* much [,] things can be bad."

I think you got trolled. All of the mistakes are too perfect to be an accident.

John Underwood, the director of the American Athletic Institute, has studied decades of scientific research on youth, college and elite athletes as it relates to alcohol, social drugs and nutrition.

There is a very brief summary of his institute's findings related to alcohol here:

http://www.southingtonsteps.org/article/2011/06/14/parenting-tip-athletealcohol-link

In short: If you are a serious athlete of any age, you should completely eliminate alcohol and drugs as they negate all the time and effort you put into your training.

More details:

http://www.talkaboutalcohol.org/toolkit-resources/life-of-athlete

Too bad guys like Shorter, Walker, and Dixon didn't know that. They may have been able to win some Olympic medals or something if they'd not drunk so much.

Are you guys kidding? You're probably kidding/trolling. A glass or two of wine or beer per night is not going to alter your running performance at all. These articles are about the effects of "heavy" drinking and/or drug use. So yeah, avoid regular bouts of serious binge drinking and drug use by all means, but a glass of wine per day is not going to impact you at all. And, no, you don't need to check into rehab. This thread has generated a lot of hysteria or trolling, can't tell which.

I don't know about you guys but I've had my best runs after drinking 3-5 beers the night before. I usually run around 6pm the next day, but for some reason I feel great. Now if I do this 2 or 3 times a week, I get sluggish because your sleep and hydration and other stuff can get out of wack. Once a week should be fine and a beer a night probably nothing to worry about at all.

This is purely anecdotal, but the years I did my best racing I was drinking 6-8 beers a day, 5-6 days a week and running 100-120 miles for the same period.

The real key was making sure I got enough sleep, hydrating before and after, and lots of vitamins/minerals.

Stagger Lee wrote:

This is purely anecdotal, but the years I did my best racing I was drinking 6-8 beers a day, 5-6 days a week and running 100-120 miles for the same period.

The real key was making sure I got enough sleep, hydrating before and after, and lots of vitamins/minerals.

lol

Alcohol is good for you, it's that olive oil you really need to worry about. Stay away from those keggers.

fanofcross wrote:

John Underwood, the director of the American Athletic Institute, has studied decades of scientific research on youth, college and elite athletes as it relates to alcohol, social drugs and nutrition.

There is a very brief summary of his institute's findings related to alcohol here:

http://www.southingtonsteps.org/article/2011/06/14/parenting-tip-athletealcohol-link

In short: If you are a serious athlete of any age, you should completely eliminate alcohol and drugs as they negate all the time and effort you put into your training.

More details:

http://www.talkaboutalcohol.org/toolkit-resources/life-of-athlete

There's something fishy about the American Athletic Institute. I say this with a grain of salt; I can't put my finger on it. As best I can tell from a quick web search, it's a consulting firm, one designed to make money.

But it also comes at its subject, despite the scientific trappings, with a missionary zeal--one visible in the many PDF documents it has put on line--that reminds me vaguely of the "Just say no" campaign overseen by Nancy Reagan. I think it's basically a modern masculine incarnation of the Women's Christian Temperance Union--the folks responsible for bringing you prohibition. In other words, its raison d'etre isn't to do objective science, but to do what I'd call "push science," the scientific version of push polls given by various political parties and campaigns that seek specific "scientific" validation for specific a priori social goals.

I trust HRE's anecdotal account of recovering well through heavy beer drinking as I do anything put out there by the AAI.

Look, the truth is almost never all in one camp. Heavy drinking is inevitably going to impact peak athletic performance. Surely its better, when training heavily, to moderate alcohol consumption. I can't, for all that, see any way that one beer or one glass of wine a night is going to set back a collegiate runner's training. That's silly. HS kids shouldn't be drinking, period.

The problem, in any case, isn't with one beer. It's with four to six beers, or more. That may have worked for HRE, doing 150 miles a week, but it's a bad thing for any of us, much less a younger athlete in serious training.