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Run and drink beer

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A scientific look at how a post-run pint affects your favorite activity.

alcohol

A scientific look at how having a beer after a run affects you.  

The biggest surprise? The effects are different for women

I stood at the end of a ridiculously strenuous trail in the middle of the red cliffs of western Colorado. Around me, the runners enjoyed several cold, locally made beers wrapped in neoprene bags labeled with a sketch of the mountain we had just run, and on the bags were written from top to bottom the words “I survived the Summit and the Fall. . " It was not yet 11 am; that we had just finished one of the toughest five-mile races in North America. We had won those beers. At least that's what we told each other.

It is a common ritual among my friends who run. We run, then we drink. And we are not alone. Today's informal race team meets at the Grand Junction Kannah Creek Brewing Company facility at the conclusion of their weekly trail races. Elegantly attired, Paonia's group of runners meet every Friday night for a race that ends at the Revolution Brewery. And then there is the famous Hash House Harriers, with headquarters all over the world, which calls itself a drinking club with a runner's trouble. Among runners, coffee is perhaps the only drink more popular than beer.

My girlfriends and I often joke that we overload carbs when we drink a six-pack of beers together, but every now and then I wake up groggy and wonder: Could my drinking habit be hurting my career?

It turns out that research on alcohol and exercise is like the same addiction as our culture's attitude toward the bottle. Most of the early studies investigated the potential of alcohol as a performance enhancer. It seems ridiculous now, but during the 1904 Olympic Marathon, United States gold medalist Thomas Hicks was given a mixture of brandy, strychnine, and egg whites in an effort to gain a competitive advantage. Many coaches at the time believed alcohol increased energy.

In more recent years, of course, that belief has been largely disproved. A study of sprint and middle distance runners, for example, found that at most distances the more alcohol the athletes drank, the slower they ran. However, another study on male cyclists found that drinking the equivalent of two shots of hard liquor an hour before exercising did not give athletes distinct advantages, nor did it significantly damage heart rate, blood pressure, or oxygen consumption. . Even a hangover doesn't seem to decrease aerobic capacity - which makes you feel bad - so there is no inferior performance. But at the same time, there is no evidence to suggest that drinking after a workout could spoil recovery from muscle damage or aches and reduce the amount of energy stored in the muscles.

So what was all this conflicting information really telling me? Being a former scientist, I had my own theories about how mixing drinking and correr. So I couldn't resist putting them to the test.

The nearby University of Colorado had just opened the Monfort Family Development Research Laboratory. An exercise technical conditions science facility seemed like the perfect place to explore the effects of alcohol on running performance.

My friend Gig Leadbetter, Ph.D., coach of the school's cross-country team and an exercise scientist at the Monfort Laboratory. Also a homebrewer and winemaker and, without any discussion, agreed to draw up a study for the runner world.

He decided to test whether drinking beer immediately after a tough race would undermine performance the next day. Since men and women metabolize alcohol differently, she opted to test quite a few and look for their effects on gender difference, something that previous studies did not examine.

The first part of the "Beer Race" experiment was 45 minutes: running early at night with an intensity that would require tapping into fuel reserves in the muscle, immediately followed by a serving of beer. Part two: post-execution burnout, which would take place the next morning and provide a measure of recovery. In this run, the volunteers were asked correr to 80 percent of their maximum for as long as they could tolerate.

The researchers tested the volunteers on two occasions, using two beers with no name and no use for their alcohol content.

In one round some runners drank regular beer-while others had a non-alcoholic beer. (In the second round, the beer options were reversed.) One would expect runners running on regular beer to burn off their energies faster in the morning than those running in the morning after drinking the non-alcoholic beer. Regular beer can alter the amounts of fat and carbohydrates our muscles burn for fuel.

Thanks to science!

We had recruited five men and five women - myself included - ages 29 to 43, all moderate drinkers (defined as drinking less than the recommended daily limits of two drinks per day for men, one for women) and running as long as minus 35 miles per week. At the orientation, previously a week before the "first beer race," Leadbetter explained the study before the regular beers were served. He was trying to bring our blood alcohol concentration to about 0,07 percent (BAC), which is below the legal limit for driving. The hope was to simulate a "normal" amount of beer that a runner could drink after a race or workout.

To find out how many beers will be "normal," Leadbetter began by using the framework that the United States government estimates affects reactions to blood alcohol levels using percentages of body weight and alcohol. Over the course of the next hour, everyone drank what the graph predicted would equal a 0,07 percent BAC. Because the individual's metabolism can vary, however, Leadbetter invited a couple of police officers to take us some micrometer tests to ensure everyone had the correct level.

Good thing he asked for backup. The government board had given the reason for the brand for some, but it was very far from the others. It was correctly predicted, for example, that 29-year-old Daniel Rohr would need to drink three and a half beers to reach 0,07. However, Bryan Whitt, a muscular 149 pounds, had to drink almost three only. When Whitt walked to the front of the room and confronted the police for his moment of truth, he didn't seem at all affected. But when he blew into the breathalyzer, the number went up to 0.095 percent. The chart also mistakenly limited a tiny Cynthia Malleck to a 12-ounce beer, when she really needed almost two full bottles. At the end of the night, when the volunteers met their designated drivers, Leadbetter and his team knew exactly how much to give each of the riders a drink.

Everyone got back together the following Friday night for the first Beer Run. We ran on treadmills for 45 minutes at a steady pace that took time, but weren't too strenuous. Then we gathered on the patio behind the lab and drank cold beer (or the placebo) and devoured plates of pasta and tomato sauce (carbohydrates!).

The next morning, the volunteers returned to the lab for the first exhaustion run, a task as grueling as it sounds. Running at a fast pace for as long as possible, the researchers measured heart rates and metabolic factors, such as oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production. Every three minutes, we were asked to define the difficulty we were experiencing.

My legs hurt from the start, but I was determined to hold out for 20 minutes. The clock on the treadmill crashed, but glancing at a clock across the room, I could get an idea of ​​my time. As I approached what I thought was about 20 minutes, my will to continue faded and my perceived exertion skyrocketed. My legs felt heavy and uncooperative, but did they really wear me out? Well, no. My heart rate and breathing were fine. With Leadbetter and the other researchers cheering me on, I kept going until at 32 minutes 23 seconds, I was finally done.

I took a bagel and orange juice at the breakfast buffet, and then I went home to rest for the next race. That night, I hit the tape and the foam again. Even though he had napped during the day, this second "beer run" felt tougher than the first. By the time we hit the treadmill for the second exhaustion run the next day, my legs and brain were shot. Still, I was determined to suffer as hard as I could in the name of science — this was not the time to go easy. But it lasted only 27 minutes and 31 seconds, almost five minutes less than I could the day before.

GOOD FOR WOMEN, BAD FOR MEN?

Immediately after the second exhaustion race, I sat down with Leadbetter to review the results. The first shock was personal: I had assumed my second exhaustion run was poor because I had drunk the real beer the night before. Incorrect! In fact, I had been served the placebo the night before. Without a doubt my results were a fluke. Leadbetter sent all the data to Bob Pettitt, Ph.D., an expert exercise and statistical physiologist in Mankato, Minnesota.

The time differences between beer and placebo in exhaustion runs varied considerably from one individual to another. But when Pettitt averaged the time differences between the two races together, they equaled a gigantic, round ZERO. Why? "Women did better after beer, but men did much worse," says Leadbetter.

The five women ran an average of 22 percent more the morning after drinking regular beer, while the men ran 21 percent less.

Pettitt's analysis showed that this gender difference was statistically significant. However, "finding gender differences based on 10 subjects is a big assumption," he says. Leadbetter agrees, which is why he has spent the last few months studying a larger group of runners. "Obviously, women use and metabolize fuel sources differently than men," says Leadbetter. "If we find the same effect in [further] studies, then it's going to be very exciting."

Ratings of perceived exertion, on the other hand, did not show any significant difference between trials, implying that racing did not feel easier or more difficult after real beer versus placebo beer.

If consumption in moderate doses has a negative impact on performance, it appears to be very modest, says Leadbetter. But even without a definitive answer, the results offer some assurance to beer drinkers. For those who are running for pleasure, the effect is no big deal, he says. On the other hand, if beer turns out to help women and harm men as this study indicates, not a single percentage point of alcohol could mean the difference between a good solid run and a record!

Written by

Christie Aschwanden

Runner's World

published on January 05, 2012

Adapted and translated text.

Frequently asked questions from our readers:

It is not recommended to run and drink beer for physical preparation, since alcohol can negatively affect sports performance, dehydrate the body and make muscle recovery difficult. Read more here: https://www.equilibriumx.com/preparacion-fisica/correr-y-beber-cerveza
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Last modified: March 27, 2024