Ross Tucker
Q: I’m a bit of a party girl at heart but I’ve also set my mind to completing a triathlon this year. Will alcohol affect my training?
In moderation, no, it won’t. But in larger amounts, then it certainly can have an impact. One of the main effects of alcohol is that it hampers the production of glucose by the liver during exercise. The result is that if you do longer training sessions, where your liver has to supply glucose to your muscles (think of it as a fuel tank), you might find that your blood sugar levels fall and you become hypoglycemic. Another downside is that alcohol is a diuretic, which causes you to lose more water.
The sum total of these physiological effects is that if you do a longer run or cycle the morning after a night out, you may feel flat, run down and generally very lethargic. You might even start to feel light-headed and dizzy, thanks to the hypoglycemia. Note that this happens even when you’re not hungover (which is just an extreme form of the above, plus a few metabolic products of alcohol working their magic)! The remedy, of course, is moderation, and knowing that if you are training the next day, you’d be better off limiting the alcohol intake to one or two drinks, and also making sure you have energy on hand when you do train (a sports drink or fruit-juice is sufficient).
In addition, alcohol also delays recovery. This means that if you do a harder training session, and then follow this with a heavy night, you will take longer to recover. I probably sound like your parents, but moderation is key.
And finally, remember that it’s not just alcohol, but lack of sleep, passive smoking and general tiredness, which is associated with going out often that can affect you. But if you manage yourself carefully, there’s no reason why you can’t have fun and get fit at the same time!
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