How much does alcohol affect race performance?

Wondering whether going out for a few drinks occasionally will affect your careful training and race-day performance?

Our experts Andrew Hamilton, a sports scientist and experienced triathlete, and four-time Xterra world champ Conrad Stoltz give their thoughts…

Watch out for dehydration

It depends very much on how much and how often you drink. Assuming that you’re not going on a bender each week, it’s unlikely that three or four pints of beer on a Saturday night will have a major impact on your general health. However, it may well affect your performance, especially if you plan to train or compete over the following days.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, alcohol promotes fluid loss by depressing production of the hormone vasopressin. Vasopressin helps to ensure the concentration of fluids in blood and body tissues is appropriate and interference with its action leads to an increased loss of body fluid from urination, which can contribute towards dehydration.

To make matters worse, alcohol-induced fluid loss can lead to the additional loss of key electrolytes like magnesium, potassium and calcium, which are involved in nerve and muscle action during exercise.

Research has shown that two litres (3.5 pints) of medium-strength beer after exercise can lead to significant dehydration, delaying the process of recovery. However, consume weaker beers (2% or less) and the dehydration effects of alcohol become negligible.

A knock-on effect of dehydration is that muscle glycogen synthesis (which requires water to ‘fix’ the glycogen into the muscles) can be impaired. This is exactly what you don’t want after training, when the goal is to recover and replenish your stores of muscle glycogen as rapidly as possible!

And even when dehydration isn’t an issue, alcohol can still interfere with the synthesis of liver glycogen, which acts as an energy reservoir, helping to smooth out energy levels during exercise.

For all these reasons, while a few drinks occasionally aren’t going to harm you, it’s probably better to give alcohol a complete miss during periods of heavy, daily training – and certainly in the run-up to competition.

How alcohol affects your body

Enjoy the small pleasures

Conrad Stoltz on the bike at Xterra UK 2015

I believe that to be successful in life you need to have a sustainable lifestyle – whether that be the sports you participate in recreationally, your job or whatever you’re passionate about (adds Conrad Stoltz).

I’ve been racing triathlon professionally for over 20 years now and I believe my longevity is largely attributed to living a healthy, balanced lifestyle without going to extremes in an attempt to better my performance.

I know that ultimately it’s this balance that will make me a more successful athlete in the long run, and by overdoing things I know I could burn out and my career could end prematurely.

I don’t do diets or blocks of training that are unrealistically exhausting, and I take the time to pursue hobbies and interests outside of triathlon.

Although I love my training and try to eat and drink healthily most of the time, I also really enjoy the small pleasures in life – coffee and cake are my favourite treats after hard sessions, and I particularly enjoy good beer or wine.

I really have a taste for the various flavours of craft beer. I also live in Stellenbosch, the heart of the South African wine country, so I have a wide selection right under my nose. In fact, I have a beer or wine just about every day.

It adds taste and variation to my diet, helps me relax after a long day and it feels like a reward for hard work. Good wine also enhances the taste of food and brings friends together!

Although alcohol may have a small detrimental effect on training and performance, this is offset by being happy and content, and not depriving myself of something that I actually really enjoy.

Having said all this, going out and getting hammered all the time is probably not the best thing to do for sporting performance or life in general! Like everything in life, enjoy in moderation!

Top image credit: Matt Alexander

About

Andrew Hamilton (BSc Hons, MRSC, ACSM) has been involved in the fitness and sports-performance industries for over 30 years. As a former cyclist, runner and triathlete, Andrew became interested in enhancing performance through structured training and nutrition. After training to become a fitness teacher, Andrew taught in the fitness industry for 10 years before taking a degree in chemistry at the University of Aberdeen with a view to underpinning his growing interest in nutrition and performance. With extensive practical experience of the fitness industry and an in-depth scientific grounding, Andrew began writing for Ultra-Fit Magazine (then the UK’s longest established fitness publication) back in 1997 and subsequently became its features editor. During the following years, he became accredited to teach and assess the national NVQ qualification in Exercise and Gym by gaining D32/33 Assessor’s Award and was also awarded full membership of the Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC) as well as being nominated for Energise Nutrition’s ‘Fitness Professional of the Year’ award. In 2003, Andrew became a member of the American College of Sports Medicine, universally acknowledged as the world’s leading authority on fitness, sports training and sports medicine. Since 2005, Andrew has been the editor of and a writer for Peak Performance, the authoritative online sport performance publication that reports on the latest sports science findings, and how athletes and coaches can apply these findings to maximise performance. In addition, Andrew is also a contributor to and sub editor for Peak Performance’s sister publication Sports Injury Bulletin, which provides the latest sports-injury science and best practice for physiotherapists and clinicians with athletes in their care. In addition to his regular work, Andrew also writes for other sports-related publications. In recent years, these have included: ‘Cycling Weekly’, ‘The British Journal of Cycle Coaching’, ‘Athletics Weekly’, ‘Australian Ultra-Fit’ and ‘Workout Magazine’. Andrew has also advised as a scientific consultant to the fitness and sports nutrition industries, including High5, one of UK’s leading sports nutrition manufacturers. After 30 years in this industry, Andrew is as passionate as ever about fitness and sports performance; indeed, he can still be spotted cycling and running the hills of the Northumberland Pennines in the far north of England where he now lives.