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Well, I also think the fact you rarely drink also contributes to it all – I wonder if people who typically have a beer or glass or wine or two with dinner each night would have the same effect…
Great report my only question is on the run did you run outside or inside because the temp last weekend was extremely hot and when is extremely hot my heart rate goes up a lot . may be that influence on it other than that great job….
Eric
Interesting numbers, but question is were the tests done in exactly the same conditions? There are probably more variables at play like eric said – what was the temperature, how much did you hydrate during the exercise, did you ride the same route / set, did you run the same route, etc.?
I’m not defending drinking here. I do have occasional glass of red wine with evening meal and do not see any such variation in my workouts (unless I get 4 hours of sleep, but then it is totally different game). Truth to be told I had more than 3 drinks this summer so my body may be more accustomed to it.
There are few studies that have been published recently and discussed in few podcasts that show that light drinking (1 glass women and 2 glasses man) has positive effect on cardiovascular system.
But you may have been dehydrated from the drinking even if it is only small quantity your body may not be used to it.
Congratulations on your AG placement this weekend. Quite an effort in that horrible weather. I did long run that day and has a lot of problems on the way.
Hmmm.. you are such a geek – or should I say..you’re a numbers guy… ?
let that be a lesson to those who want to go out for a few the night before a competition..
I quit drinking many many years ago but that hasn’t helped me…LOL!!!
Great quetsions. Obviously my analysis isn’t an exact science, however here’s some things I may not have directly mentioned:
1) The bike conditions were functionally identical as they were both inside and in the same location in my house.
2) The run conditions were on the same course, but at different times of day (morning vs afternoon). However, the temp and humidity was similiar, as the first day it was about the same temp in the afternoon as it was still fairly early in the morning on Saturday. Albiet a touch bit higher humidity on Saturday.
3) My taper: Theoretically speaking, I would have been further into the taper, and thus Saturday should have been stronger/easier – that’s the usual pattern when I do this three-some set of workouts the week before the race.
also, your best race of the year was TWO days post-substance abuse! very informative. I can’t drink and train. it’s impossible. i have no data but my brain. and it says no no no.
When I was younger I could drink and train and even drink then race. Now if I drink it kills me. Wine makes me pee 3-4 times a night and that kills my sleep. I’m sooo looking forward to a beer after this season is over. I ‘cut’ it out 2 months before big races, just have a drink on a special occasion. Then 1 month before I completely cut it out. I had a sip of wine 3 weeks ago. That’s pretty much it for this summer.
From personal experience I do know that alcohol tends to up the heart rate, whether exercising or not. From your data, I guess I’ll be going on the wagon!
I don’t know much about the negative effects of alcohol on my training, but I do know that after a drunken night and a slight hangover, my favorite thing to do is go workout. It makes me feel like I’m flushing out all those toxins.
Well, sh**.
That’s what’s been holding me back all this time, isn’t it? Damn.
Actually, I am fully aware that if I cut out alcohol I would probably a) recover better and b) perform better.
I remember Chris’s post a few months ago on that and I commented back then, too.
The problem is…I live in Sonoma County. And they make amazing wine here. And a lot of good food, too. And wine goes very well with food. Like, when I saw that picture of your steak I immediately thought “oooh, put that with a nicely aged Cabernet Sauvignon and BAM!”
I think if I lived somewhere else it might not be so hard, but here…oh it’s so difficult. Did I also mention that working for a winery gets me discounts on incredible wine?
But anyway, I do wonder if what Danielle says has something to it – because you don’t drink very often, could it impact you more, than, say, me? And you mentioned you had two wines and a beer – mixing is generally something that leads to hangovers as we get older. Could it have been something about that? In spite of the fact that I am a certified wine-o (and beer lover), I never mix. And unless it’s a special occasion, never drink more than two glasses of wine. So even though it was well over the course of 4 hours, it still was a considerable amount of alcohol.
Hmmm…lots of things to consider here. Very interesting!!!
Hi Nice Blog Good Cardiovascular health is important in maintaining overall health and wellness. Cardiovascular Health is a new section, which will teach you how your heart and cardiovascular system information work when healthy, and what happens when diseased.
Interesting experiment. Let’s do another one (on you ;-)
How about consuming something else you rarely have, just guessing but like.. a few Krispy Kremes or smoke a couple cigars, then repeat the test.
Guess I’m wondering if it’s the wine or consuming any non-usual items the night before physical exercise causes suboptional performance.
Could be the wine though.. they don’t call it ‘inToxication’ for nothing.
“But you may have been dehydrated from the drinking even if it is only small quantity your body may not be used to it.”
Did you not read of the insane amount of water he drank that night?
All our studies in psych taught us that tollerence plays a huge role in our bodies (and minds) ability to process drugs and alcohol. I’d betting a large portion of this effect seen is due to your body’s intollerence to the substance. I would likely not see the same effect as I drink lots, I’m not an alcoholic but we have very european roots and as such I’ve been drinking wine with almost every meal since I was 13.
The tollerence effect is why in my University days or heavy drinking and partying I could easily drink a 250lbs man under the table if he wasn’t used to drinking. Even at my then weight of 155lbs and being a woman.
I’m not saying go out and start drinking more to avoid having an effect when you do… but I’m going to lay odds that tollerence was the main variable in this test. Great food for thought though!
Dear DCR,
I really like your site and the thoroughness of your analysis of products and in general. And it really is an interesting question for the ambitious athlete whether or not a little alcohol now and then does really have an impact on your performance.
You infer: “drinking just a little bit the night before has a fairly significant effect on my performance” As mentioned in other posts, I think that conclusion cannot be derived from this experiment – because there were many things different that second day, not only the drinking.
Now, the reason I am posting something here is, because I would like to show you that it is mathematically quite simple make a simple calculation to test your hypothesis. Maybe you are interested in incorporating this in further posts. (maybe you know all this, then pardon me and ignore this post).
Let’s say you would like to test the hypothesis, “drinking on day 1 has a negative effect on performance on day 2”. In statistical testing the idea is to reverse the problem and test the so called Null-Hypothesis. In that case it would be the hypothesis “drinking has no effect” (usually called H0). Under that assumption you would hopefully agree that the probability, for worse performance on day 2 (let’s write “day1>day2”) would be exactly 1/2 – because there is some natural variability and we virtually never have “day1=day2”.
We know pose the question: “How large is the probability that I dismiss H0, while H0 is true”? Well, that probability is exactly 1/2^(N), where n is the number of comparative days, in your case N=1. So there is actually a 50% chance that you are drawing the wrong conclusions. Now how many tests would we need to lower that probability to below 1%? You can find that value in Excel using the function BINOMDIST. When you use that function you can find out that when you test 100 training days with alcohol and you would like the probability below 1% for a possibly random result, that you would need at least 61 training days with lowered performance.
Hope you find this interesting…
thanks,
Oliver
Thanks for interesting article. I love that you are scientific about this! Thank you for the link to Chris Tremonte’s post on the same, however I think the link you posted my be wrong … it came up with a “page not found” notice. I found his blogspot, so I will search from there, but I thought you’d want to know. Cheers!
Just to clarify… “I don’t drink a lot, never really have – but I certainly enjoy an occasional beverage. By ‘not a lot’, I would say I maybe had four drinks all summer long. Yes…not a lot.” …”Last Friday night I went out and over the course of dinner and a short trip to a nearby bar I consumed two glasses of wine and a beer. For me, that barely registered as a light buzz.”
You said that you would only have “four drinks all Summer long”, but yet 3 drinks “barely registered as a light buzz”
My point…Its in your blood and you should drink more often since you PR’d 2 days later!
Cheers mate, thanks for the good reviews and info!
I drank a glass of beer the evening before my last marathon and chopped 6 minutes of my PB. What would have happened if I had not been drinking? ?
I don’t believe in sports and drinking though ?