I have heard from many people that drinking to the excess even once in a while can set you back overall in running. Is this true, somewhat true, false?
I have heard from many people that drinking to the excess even once in a while can set you back overall in running. Is this true, somewhat true, false?
Absolutely true.
Define "excess"
Considering I got drunk 2-3x/week in college, this would explain a lot about my PBs from freshman year. Basically I was training at a net of 1-2 days/week.
Cf. 100 beers/100 mile thread
Foster Brooks wrote:
Absolutely true.
No its not true even in the slightest. Assuming you can do the same training the next with or without drinking the night before. We were a perennial top 10 D1 track team and I'd bet we were a top 10 drinking team too.
Hell look at Arkansas back in the day(and today for that matter).
You are an idiot of epic proportions if you don't believe excessive drinking affects your performance.
Obviously it affects your performance to some extent, but no I don't think there's any research out there that would indicate that binge drinking basically erases the past couple days of training you did. That's preposterous.
Og_Bobby_johnson wrote:
I have heard from many people that drinking to the excess even once in a while can set you back overall in running. Is this true, somewhat true, false?
People say not to drink because it can affect he quality of your training, it does not just take off the effects of training. If you can train well after drinking than you are fine, I don't know anyone that can get drunk and have a good workout the next day. My rule is that I never drink 48 hours before a meet, and never drink within 24 hours of anything other than an easy run or a long run. So basically I will drink once a week, either Friday night or Saturday night after getting back from meets. Plus my school is small enough to where there aren't any parties Sunday thru Wednesday (Thursday's are occasional), so it's not really an issue anyways.
Pro tip: being a little drunk for long runs helps it go by faster, especially if you are running 14+ and its cold.
bigtool05 wrote:
Obviously it affects your performance to some extent, but no I don't think there's any research out there that would indicate that binge drinking basically erases the past couple days of training you did. That's preposterous.
Some ways that alcohol negatively impacts your training benefit from the previous day or two:
- Disturbed sleep
- Lower levels of HGH and other hormones
- Decreased insulin sensitivity
These basically all have to do with recovery. Most of the training benefit you get from a session comes over the new few days as your body recovers.
That being said, I'd say that alcohol has a much bigger negative impact on sprint training than on distance training. That is because with sprint training, CNS recovery is much more important than with any endurance event, which alcohol also seems to harm, so you get a double whammy with sprint training.
With distance training, it seems the bigger potential for harming your training is the if you are hung over the next day. But even then, sometimes that hangover turned into a strangely good workout the next morning in college, but other times I felt like I was running through mud.
My rule of thumb is don't be afraid to have some fun off season and even a bit into the season, but taper it off to nothing by the end of the season. But it all comes down to how serious you are though, of course. If you're just trying to win your local 5ks, why alter your lifestyle?
Thanks for your response! 10/10
BTW Im training for my first college XC 8k so I gave up drinking for now so I dont embarrass myself and run like a 32:00 lol