How Does Drinking Affect Training?

Alcohol affects your ability to train, it doesn't just make you slower. I get trashed at least once every week (when not on dry season) and I have been fine. The key is to never drink within 24 hours of anything other than easy running/a long run, and don't drink within 48 hours of a race. I have done long runs still drunk, and honestly, it's pretty nice. We usually race Saturdays, so after the meets most of the team at least drinks a little bit (lots of people get trashed) and then we have our long run (on your own in non XC seasons) Sunday at 8 am, so the trick is to still be a little buzzed when the run starts so you don't get hung over. We have a dry season (no drinking) since people aren't careful with drinking and it can get out of hand. Honestly, just be careful with when you drink and quality days. And maybe don't drink the week leading to a big meet like conferences/regionals/nationals if you really care enough, not drinking won't hurt and drinking COULD hurt. Another point that has been made to me, if you can't not drink for a month, than you are most likely an alcoholic.

1. No drinking within 24 hours of anything other than easy running or a long run

2. No drinking 48 hours leading up to a race

3. It's ok to be a little drunk for a run

4. it's much better to be drunk than hung over for a run (both the way you feel and quality of training)

5. Training/school takes priority over alcohol

6. This is what I follow and I've had no problems

It definitely doesn't help

It can affect your stride pattern and co-ordination

In severe cases you could get lost while training but that's at the extreme end

Hope this helps

Yes, alcohol negatively impacts your training. Though it is true consuming the alcohol itself wont move you backwards, what it does to your training will indeed make you slower if done enough. When you drink, the alcohol impacts your body's ability to synthesize proteins. This means your body cannot repair muscles fully and efficiently. As a result, any training done within 24-72 (depending on level of consumption) after consumption and as much as 24 hours prior to consumption is essentially wiped out. You have basically undone any progress you should have made during that time. If done frequently enough, this will lead to retrogression. In addition, intoxication leads to dehydration which can negatively impact your training the following day(s). Though this is not necessarily a concern will elite and collegiate runners, the amount of carbs in a beer (along with all the crap you tend to eat while drunk) can easily tip you over your calorie needs for the day and you could end up gaining unexpected weight. 10lbs is estimated to add anywhere from 10-20 seconds per mile over long distances so the few extra pounds from all those beers could mean the difference between a 26:00 and 25:00 over 8k.

Just stay below a bottle of vodka a day and you'll be fine.

Steve Jones attended a friend's wedding on the night before he broke the half marathon WR. He drank a lot of strong alcohol there.

What you drink (or how much) does not affect your running.

D1: No drinking

D2: Heavy drinking until championship season

D3 & NAIA: Alcoholics

It impairs training, but makes everything else awesome. Just lay off it during the season, and get hammered after conferences / nationals depending on your caliber. Nothing more fun that watching a bunch of skinny distance runners with zero tolerance turn into incoherent idiots at the end of a season. That's more the Division 1 way than complete sobriety (at least it's what worked for me).

bill nye the acting guy wrote:

When you drink, the alcohol impacts your body's ability to synthesize proteins.

I have read that and a bunch of other similar claims many times, and there is never any kind of attribution nor a link to an actual study. Got one? Otherwise I call BS.

Recommendation to the OP: moderation. No reason to get "trashed" on a regular basis. Just drink enough to lighten the mood and enjoy yourself. Having been trashed way more times than I can count I can tell you that it's really not worth it. Yes, it impacts training -- not because of protein synthesis but because it's tough to focus when you're sweating alcohol and want to have a long vomit rather than a long run. Light drinking, on the other hand, has been a component of many fun nights, and many successful runs the next day. Have fun, don't be a tool, but don't overdo it.

that is fing bs wrote:

I have read that and a bunch of other similar claims many times, and there is never any kind of attribution nor a link to an actual study. Got one? Otherwise I call BS.

Its actually really well documented so here ya go champ:

LOL, just because something is published and can be found via pubmed doesn't make it true or "well documented". In fact most published research findings are false http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124. Mull that one over.

There's nothing at all well documented, per that article. There are just a lot of open questions.

Some key quotes:

"To date, these studies have produced inconclusive results"

"acute ingestion appears to have little impact on exercise-mediated muscular damage"

"Prolonged alcoholism is associated with high circulating levels of pro-inflammatory mediators" --> Okay, fine. Alcoholism is not good. I concur. But we're not talking about alcoholism. We're talking about having some beers at a party. Right?

"Similarly to the analysis of markers of muscle damage, the intra-muscular consequences of acute alcohol ingestion on aspects metabolic pathways of recovery are also ambiguous in humans."

"Although acute suppression of glycogen synthesis may have been evident, examination of glycogen repletion over 24 hours demonstrated no long term detrimental impact"

"It remains to be confirmed in rodents subjected either to muscle loading or resistance exercise that alcohol impairs protein synthesis. Subsequent clinical data is also lacking and this remains a critical absence in the scientific literature."

On one level, it doesn't really matter how much it affects your running, if the one dude says he doesn't want to drink his friends should respect that and not push drinks on him. That's kind of messed up. What if there's another reason he's not drinking, like if alcoholism runs in his family?

Don't have research off hand, but anecdotally speaking hard drinking will destroy at least one day of training guaranteed. High risk alcohol behavior, ie more than 14 drinks a week or more than 4 drinks on any one day can do worse. Most obvious are poor sleep quality, GI issues, and for some people chronic fatigue and depression. Honestly though probably the biggest risk is just getting injured or arrested doing stupid things drunk; happens way more than it should.

Relax, have a couple drinks now and then but not more, have a good time, and your running won't suffer. But the macho thing bragging about how you get wasted all the time and are totally fine is BS and is what really gets people into trouble.

Alcohol makes people appear much more attractive, which means more sex, and sex is great for running performance.

Bruh wrote:

Alcohol affects your ability to train, it doesn't just make you slower. I get trashed at least once every week (when not on dry season) and I have been fine. The key is to never drink within 24 hours of anything other than easy running/a long run, and don't drink within 48 hours of a race. I have done long runs still drunk, and honestly, it's pretty nice. We usually race Saturdays, so after the meets most of the team at least drinks a little bit (lots of people get trashed) and then we have our long run (on your own in non XC seasons) Sunday at 8 am, so the trick is to still be a little buzzed when the run starts so you don't get hung over.

Question, what is up with so many college teams doing hard workouts damn early in the morning? Or for example hard in the morning and easy in the evening. The last ting Im ready for 8am is to do a hard workout, and who would wanna do their weekly long run 8am on a SUNDAY?

Part of it is scheduling, but with workouts it's best to do it in the morning cause

1.) Most races are early so you get used to going hard on tire-ish legs. Mental training

2.) It allows you to do a shake-out run in the evening which helps aid recovery

3.) Beat the heat. Better to do the fast stuff while it's cooler so you can hit your paces at the correct effort level than push twice as hard thru the heat and humidity to scrap together your splits

EasilyFooled wrote:

LOL, just because something is published and can be found via pubmed doesn't make it true or "well documented". In fact most published research findings are false

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

. Mull that one over.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that sometimes runners race well the day after a few drinks, and sometimes they race badly.

One time I set a big xc PR in hs the day after having SEVERAL strong drinks at a party and waking up completely dead and I've also completed some of my fastest workouts hungover.

On the other hand there were races I ran hungover that were more painful and so much slower than what I believe I could've/should've achieved at my level of fitness...

By the time I got to college I learned not to drink in season but as a jr/sr in high school I was a rebellious kid and never fully committed.

If you are going to drink then HYDRATE HYDRATE HYDRATE!!!! That's the worst part of running and drinking, realizing how extremely dehydrated and weak you feel in the first minutes of the race and knowing it's your fault.

zzzzzzzzzz wrote:

One time I set a big xc PR in hs the day after having SEVERAL strong drinks at a party and waking up completely dead and I've also completed some of my fastest workouts hungover.

So I've found a few sources which say alcohol reduces T levels:

(Now for the total speculation) Could this "feeling good the next day" be because the body is revving up testosterone production to compensate?

Oh, drinking definitely helps with running. I started drinking around age 16 and my 5k PR was 17:08. I have been guzzling beers ever since and now I am down to 15:41. So, beer drinking improves running by no less than 15-20 seconds a mile.