There’s two things in life I’m addicted to - alcohol and exercise.
I drink more or less every night, regular strength beer, maybe four or five pints. I run more or less every evening too (before I drink).
I can do about 44 minutes for a 10k. My question is, how much is this likely to be affected by my drinking? If I cut out the beers and made up the calories with other ‘healthy’ food, would I be running significantly more quickly?
The most significant result would be that you would probably lose a few pounds. And weightloss will result in a few seconds per kilometer speed increase. I’ve seen various calculations on some of the running sites which attempt to quantify the relationship between weightloss and speed. I’m sure it’s all well thought out. But I tend to favor quality of life over speed, i.e. my quality of life would suffer greatly if I gave up drinking and, most assuredly, would not be offset by running a 41 minute 10k.
That amount of beer is considered heavy drinking. 1-2 12oz beers is considered the max. per day for an average man.
I would think that cutting down the drinking will help your running as well as your overall health.
Why not try cutting back the beers - probably a more realistic goal.
Not if I -
And I know it’s probably too much, but heck I’m single, I like it, and my overall health is much better than the average person my age (so far).
I’d still be interested in the answer if anyone can help?
I don’t drink, and it takes me one hour to run 10K, which I do daily.
So, no, obviously, the drinking is helping you out! 
Even if you replace the calories with other food, your body comp will change assuming you don’t replace the calories with pure sugar.
This article lists all the ways that alcohol will interfere with athletics:
http://www.nmnathletics.com/attachments1/507.htm?DB_OEM_ID=5800
Here is a study about alcohol post exercise and glycogen storage:
http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/95/3/983
According to my calculations, increasing your alcohol intake as little as 22% will cause a perceived increase in speed of over 25%.
Well since a pint of 4.8% alcohol beer is 2.2 standard drinks, you are drinking between 9 and 11 drinks a day. This is about half a bottle of spirits so you have far bigger problems than how it effects your running speed.
Please, I was asking what I thought was a straightforward question. I appreciate concern, but I’m not asking for medical advice or comments regarding my lifestyle.
Ahh, but once the drinking takes a toll on your skeleton system it will surely slow you down. Many people tell me it is rather hard to run 10k with a couple of stress fractures.
If anyone wonders, a few minutes with the Google will explain what I mean.
damn. a twelvepack a day. a doff of the cap to you.
I’ve found that I can exercise at a higher intensity when I’ve stopped drinking beer. Riding a bike up a hill that my cycling team rides up fairly fast, I was able to hit a maximum heart rate of 186 (and feel good), when my max was about 175 when I was drinking. Anecdotal I know, but the only difference that I could find between the two efforts was the beer.
Given that you’re obviously fit, I’d speculate that the only thing that will make you run faster is a training program focussed on improving your speed. So if you’re talking about just laying off the ale, but continuing to run as normal then I wouldn’t expect to see much in the way of change - maybe a bit faster if you drop a few pounds. So in that respect the ale is not holding you back particularly.
It is a giant obstacle, though, if you really did want to improve your speed and get under 40 mins, say. The type of training needed to knock 10% off your time would be intense, added to the weight loss you’d need there is no way you could achieve this if you’re tanning the bevvy every night.
BTW - I’m a bit of a bevvy merchant myself, but find that a few days off each week makes the next session more enjoyable.
Humm - well this is a bit of a WAG; however, if you cut out the alcohol (which has pretty well no food value) and replaced it with super healthy stuff (fruits, veg, etc) you would probably see a performance improvement - any athlete training for anything tends to ‘eat clean’ using what they put in their mouth as fuel, as opposed to enjoyment.
How much speed you would gain - well, I dunno.
However, if you cut out the alcohol 100% and replaced with with 50% as much in super healthy food you would probably gain more speed due to the weight loss. Even if you’re already slim, you’d be amazed what losing even 10 lbs can do for your speed (she says as a former competitive runner).
Now, if you cut out the alcohol and replace it with crap, deep fat fried pork hocks/cheese burger/french fry crap - well, I would expect very little change in your performance - perhaps even a worsening as the amount of fat in your system bogged you down a bit.
An American pint is 16 ounces, not 20, so it’s a bit less than that.
And a standard beer is usually 12 oz. at 5%. 12 oz beer =~ 5 oz wine = 1.5 oz 80 proof shot. So, in the interests of accuracy, no the OP is not polishing off a 12-pack a day. More like a six pack.
Are you trying not to spill your drink?
'cuz that can slow a person down considerably.
I’d pitch the drink and get something afterward…
Wouldn’t that much alcohol tend to dehydrate you? You’d probably want to drink a lot of gatorade to replenish.
My guess is you have alcohol in your system all the time and you’ve gotten used to it. I don’t know your body fat or your age.
All that said, Yes I would expect after a period of detoxification you will run better if you gave up the alcohol on a daily basis. During detox I think you will slow down and do worse.