Training: Should I run with a hang-over?

One of my runners sent me the following question the other day:

“I have a question about running when hung over. I have not been much of a drinker for several years. But Friday night I indulged quite a bit. Then didn’t sleep much at all. So I debated whether to run Saturday morning. Nope, didn’t happen…. After the fact, someone who ran track said that I should NOT run when hung over really bad. He said my various organs are already working overtime to clear the alcohol. So it would be especially taxing on the body to go for a long run. Agree?”

Photograph: still photo from the movie Beerfest. Visit the official web-site.

Let me start by telling you a little story. Once upon a time, I was living and training in Phoenix. I was near my peak for a marathon, so I needed to get in my long run of 18 or 20 miles. On Friday night, I tied one on something serious. I was pretty trashed, enough so that I didn’t get up until about 10:00AM. It was May, I believe, so by 10:00AM, the desert sun was beaming down in full force, with the temperature nearing 100 degrees or more.

The run started out pretty uneventfully, for about the first mile that is. Now I was used to running in the heat, but about six minutes into the run, I started shivering and having difficulty controlling my temperature. Forty-five minutes later, I was walking along in the desert, just hoping to find something to crawl under. I did finally find a little tree and managed to crawl into the shade for awhile to cool off. Thankfully I cooled myself enough to be able to walk back home.

What’s the moral of this story? The bottom line is that you should never run when you’re hung-over.

I have often spoken of my “Four Hs of Hurt,” which are Heat, Humidity, Hills and Head-winds. There is actually a fifth member of this terrible group: Hangovers. The problem with drinking alcohol, is that your body has to get rid of it. In the process of metabolizing the alcohol, you lose a whole lot of fluid. When you’re hung-over, you are in essence, quite dehydrated. That’s why you’re peeing all night long when drinking beer. And that’s why you feel so bad when you wake up in the morning.

So if you’ve got a hang-over, you’re going to start your run dehydrated. And as I said in my column “10 things you need to know about hydration”, if you start out dehydrated, it just gets worse from there.

My advice: leave the drinking for the night after your run. Of course, I would advise against running with a hang-over, but more than that it just doesn’t feel good anyway.

Coach Joe

Running Wild with Coach Joe – a blog focused on marathon, triathlon and ultra-endurance racing, training and motivation. Bookmark us at http://coachjoeenglish.wordpress.com or use your favorite RSS feed reader to get the latest news and articles. Running Wild is also now available on Facebook and My Space.

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